Monday, June 12, 2006

Kundiman's Vincent Chin Memorial Chapbook Prize

The Vincent Chin Memorial Chapbook Prize
Deadline: June 30, 2006
Judge: John Yau
Prize: $500, Barrow Street publication, & Full Scholarship to Kundiman Retreat 2007
Fee: $15
Guidelines: www.kundiman.org
Eligbility: Asian American poets who have not published more than one book of forty-eight pages or more.

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On June 19, 1982, in Detroit, Vincent Chin was beaten to death with a baseball bat by a man and his stepson. The two laid-off autoworkers mistook Chin for Japanese — an Asian group they blamed for the ailing U.S.auto industry. The assailants never served jail time, and later federalcivil-rights courts acquitted them entirely of the crime.

For many today, this is a rarely remembered footnote in American history.However, the tragedy of Vincent Chin marked an important change in how Asian Americans viewed themselves. It was the first time, according to APAadvocates and academics, that people who traced their ancestry todifferent countries in Asia and the Pacific Islands crossed ethnic andsocioeconomic lines to fight [politically] as a united group of AsianPacific Americans. They were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Filipino; theywere waiters, lawyers, and grandmothers who were moved to action by whathappened to Vincent Chin.

For the first time, Asian Americans banded together against the discrimination and racism directed toward the APA community. Decades later, the need for Asian Americans to unite as a population and to project a voice into the cultural mainstream is as urgent as ever.

In honor of Vincent Chin and this watershed moment in Asian American history, Kundiman and Barrow Street are sponsoring The Vincent ChinMemorial Chapbook Prize. This annual prize is an opportunity for bothKundiman and Barrow Street to support and spotlight the talent of anemerging Asian American poet, a new voice in the landscape of AsianAmerican _expression and power.

Winner will receive:
• $500 cash prize
• Chapbook publication in Barrow Street:http://www.barrowstreet.org/journal.html
• Full scholarship to the 2007 Kundiman Summer Retreat

Applicant Eligibility
Asian American poets who have not published more than one book of forty-eight pages or more.

Entry Fee
Check for $15.00 payable to The New York Foundation for the Arts

Judge
John Yau will judge this year’s contest.For guidelines and more information on The Vincent Chin Memorial Chapbook Prize, please go to: http://www.kundiman.org

2 Comments:

Blogger Darius said...

My Literary Immortality

I like to write poems
I like to write verse
I like to drink coffee and tea.
I spike it with juice
Then loose as a goose
I give away poesy for free.

6:27 PM  
Blogger Bryan Thao Worra said...

Not to be snarky or anything, but can it really be considered a chapbook if it's printed inside another document?

As my longtime readers know, I've been doing chapbooks for a while, in both print and e-form, and I just have to say it's a bit of a misnomer.

I guess my objection stems largely from the old Confucian saying that "wisdom begins when you start calling things by their proper names."

As the competition draws to a close, I have to say that as an Asian American poet, I feel it was well publicized.

There were many blogs and list-servs who did their best to post announcements.

Up here in the Midwest, mind you, I don't feel like there was a lot of buzz or people talking about submitting into the competition. That might not mean anything. Some people may be playing it close to the vest.

But I would be interested in seeing a post-competition analysis from Kundiman to get a sense of how effective the outreach was in getting representation from across the U.S.

8:32 PM  

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