Kundiman Showcase

Hugo House presents a reading in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. Dedicated to providing a nurturing space for Asian American writers, Kundiman has served hundreds of writers. With this showcase, we’re honored to add more names to that list: Jongmin Jerome Baek, Dujie Tahat, Diana Xin, Daniel Tam-Claiborne, and Troy Osaki—all Kundiman fellows or friends of Kundiman hailing from the Pacific Northwest.

About the Readers

Dujie Tahat is a Filipino-Jordanian immigrant living in Washington state. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Sugar House Review, Nashville Review, The Southeast Review, Shenandoah, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. Dujie has earned fellowships from the Richard Hugo House and Jack Straw Writing Program. He serves as a poetry editor for Moss and Homology Lit and cohosts The Poet Salon podcast. He got his start as a Seattle Poetry Slam Finalist, a collegiate grand slam champion, and Seattle Youth Speaks Grand Slam Champion, representing Seattle at HBO’s Brave New Voices.

Diana Xin holds an MFA from the University of Montana. Her fiction has appeared in Gulf Coast, Narrative, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Most recently, she was named winner of Third Coast Magazine‘s 2017 fiction contest. She is a contributing editor to Moss Lit and a 2015 recipient of the Hugo fellowship.

Daniel Tam-Claiborne is the author of the novel What Never Leaves and a contributor to the literary anthology, While We’re Here. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Huffington Post, The Shanghai Literary Review, LOST, Sage, and elsewhere. A recipient of fellowships and residencies from Kundiman and the Yiddish Book Center, he is currently an MFA candidate in fiction in the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and Yale University, and writes at travelbreedscontent.com.

Troy Osaki is a Filipino Japanese poet, community organizer, and attorney from Seattle, WA.  He’s a Kundiman fellow and a three-time Seattle poetry grand slam champion. His work has appeared in Buzzfeed, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, Moss: A Journal of the Pacific Northwest, TAYO Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. He writes in hopes to build a safe and just place to live in by uniting the people and reimagining the world through poetry.

Jongmin Jerome Baek is a Korean-American poet and philosopher of computer science. He writes to bridge the gaps between Korean and American culture, poetry and computer science, embodiment and trauma. He works at Microsoft trying to make AI less sexist.