We're excited to announce our author panel, coinciding with Asian American Heritage Month. Join us for a panel reading and discussion with these amazing authors!

Elaine Castillo, American is Not the Heart
“Castillo’s debut, a contemporary saga of an extended Filipino family, is a wonderful, nonpareil novel . . . a remarkable feat . . . a brilliant and intensely moving immigrant tale.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Elaine Castillo was born in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and received her MA in creative and life writing from Goldsmiths, University of London. She lives in Milpitas, California. AMERICA IS NOT THE HEART is her first novel.

Kirstin Chen, Bury What We Cannot Take
“Bury What We Cannot Take explores what it takes to survive in a world gone mad—and what is lost when we do. Kirstin Chen has written both an engrossing historical drama and a nuanced exploration of how far the bonds of familial love can stretch.”
—Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

Kirstin Chen's new novel, Bury What We Cannot Take (Little A, March 2018), has been named a Most Anticipated Upcoming Book by Electric Literature, The Millions, The Rumpus, Harper’s Bazaar, and InStyle, among others. She is also the author of Soy Sauce for Beginners. She was the fall 2017 NTU-NAC National Writer in Residence in Singapore, and has received awards from the Steinbeck Fellows Program, Sewanee, Hedgebrook, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Born and raised in Singapore, she currently resides in San Francisco.

Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter
“Rao’s novel should be a treat for Ferrante fans, exploring the bonds of friendship and how female ambition beats against the strictures of poverty and patriarchal societies.”
—Huffington Post

Shobha Rao burst onto the literary scene in 2016 with her rich and intelligent” (San Francisco Chronicle) short story collection An Unrestored Woman. She is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, and her story "Kavitha and Mustafa" was chosen by T. C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2015. She moved to the United States from India at the age of seven and currently lives in San Francisco.