Maxine Hong Kingston--This Friday!

Thanks to everyone who came out on Sunday to our first event of the Winter/Spring season, the Open Mic. Our next events are during AWP. First, on Friday, Maxine Hong Kingston appears (see below). Tomorrow I'll post on our Sunday event.

Maxine Hong Kingston, the acclaimed author of The Woman Warrior, will visit The Writer’s Center to read from her most recent work, the memoir I Love a Broad Margin to My Life. A highly distinguished fiction and non-fiction writer, Kingston has been awarded many of literature’s top honors, including the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Award, the presidentially conferred National Humanities Award, and, most recently, the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

What: A Reading by Maxine Hong Kingston
When: Friday, February 4th, 2011 7:30-9:30pm
Where: The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD 20815
Cost: $10 for members of The Writer’s Center; $15 for non-members
Call 301.654.8664 for tickets, or visit www.writer.org.

In I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, Kingston uses Walt Whitman-inspired free verse to revisit characters and themes from past works, and to reflect on her life and journey thus far. Other noteworthy titles include: The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts , China Men , Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book , and The Fifth Book of Peace.

Kingston’s books speak to the challenges and triumphs of growing up as a first-generation Chinese-American female. She combines personal and familial experiences with fiction to expose readers to the racial, sexual, and ethnic divides within American culture. Time Magazine, in its 60 Years of Asian Heroes issue, praised Hong Kingston: “She [has] overturned traditional notions of what it mean[s] to be a Chinese woman.”