10/10: Reading with Sunu P. Chandy, Jen Soriano, and Troy Osaki

Please join us on October 10th from 7-8pm for a reading and celebration of Sunu P. Chandy’s book of poetry, My Dear Comrades, reading and discussion with Seattle’s own Jen Soriano, author of Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing, and poems by local organizer, attorney, poet, Troy Osaki. Masks will be required for Open Books events until further notice. Thank you for understanding!

Sunu P. Chandy (she/her) is a social justice activist through her work as a poet and a civil rights attorney.  She’s a queer woman of color and lives in Washington, D.C. with her family. Sunu is the daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India. Her collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, was selected for the 2021 Terry J. Cox Prize, and published by Regal House in March 2023. Sunu’s work can also be found in publications including Asian American Literary Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Poets on Adoption, Split this Rock’s online social justice database, The Quarry, and in anthologies including The Penguin Book of Indian Poets, The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood and This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. Sunu is also a civil rights attorney and on the board of the Transgender Law Center. Sunu earned her B.A. in Peace and Global Studies/Women’s Studies from Earlham College, her law degree from Northeastern University School of Law and later, her MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Queens College/The City University of New York. Sunu was included as one the 2021 Queer Women of Washington and one of Go Magazine’s100 Women We Love: Class Of 2019. Sunu is delighted to celebrate her first collection of poetry, My Dear Comrades, with all of you and with the book's fabulous cover artist, Ragni Agarwal. 

Jen Soriano (she~they) is a Filipinx writer and movement builder who has long worked at the intersection of grassroots organizing, narrative strategy, and art-driven social change. Jen has won the International Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction, the Fugue Prose Prize, and fellowships from Hugo House, Vermont Studio Center, Artist Trust, and the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat. Jen is also an independent scholar and performer, author of the chapbook “Making the Tongue Dry,” and co-editor of Closer to Liberation: A Pina/xy Activist Anthology. She received a BA in History and Science from Harvard and an MFA in fiction and nonfiction from the Rainier Writing Workshop. Jen is also a co-founder of the cultural democracy institutions, MediaJustice and ReFrame. Originally from a landlocked part of the Chicago area, Jen now lives with her family in Seattle, near the Duwamish River and the Salish Sea. Her debut book, Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing, is now available from Amistad/HarperCollins.