Summer Reads: Issue 1 Contributors Craig Santos Perez & Henry W. Leung

For our Summer Reads series, we’ve asked contributors from Issue 1 to share what they’ve been reading or plan to read this summer. This week’s installment features reads from Craig Santos Perez and Henry W. Leung.

Writes Craig,

” . . . here are three books that i just read for this summer:

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Bus, Gizelle Gajelonia (Tinfish Press)
Shout Ha! to the Sky, Robert Sullivan (Salt)
Zong! M. Nourbese Philip (Wesleyan)”

Henry says,

“I’m working on a Fulbright application for a research novel in China,
so my reading for the next week will be research on the little that’s
been written in English about contemporary (actual contemporary, not
heavily political post-Mao post-CR) China. They include:

Yiyun Li – A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Shouhua Qi – Red Guard Fantasies and Other Stories
Xiaolu Guo – Lovers in the Age of Indifference
Deanna Fei – A Thread of Sky (product of a 2002 Fulbright in China)
Geling Yan – The Banquet Bug

and translations:
New Generation: Poems from China Today
Pearl Jacket and Other Stories: Flash Fiction from Contemporary China“

Many thanks to Craig and Henry, for sharing their reading lists with us.  You can check out Henry’s poem “Question for a Painter” and Craig’s review of Skirt Full of Black in Issue 1 of Lantern Review.

Summer Reads: Issue 1 Contributors Jon Pineda & Barbara Jane Reyes

Welcome to our new Summer Reads blog series!  We recently asked our contributors from Issue 1 to share with us what they are reading  / what’s on their reading lists this summer, and we’ll be featuring their responses here throughout the months of June and July.  This first installment features reads from Jon Pineda & Barbara Jane Reyes.

Writes Jon,

“I just finished Yoko Ogawa’s beautiful novel The Housekeeper and the Professor.”

Barbara tells us,

“I am finishing up Miguel Syjuco’s debut novel Ilustrado. Otherwise, I’m supporting some of my favorite indie publishers —

Albert Saijo, Outspeaks: A Rhapsody (Bamboo Ridge Press)
Michelle Cruz Skinner, In the Company of Strangers (Bamboo Ridge Press)
Gizelle Gajelonia, Thirteen Ways of Looking at The Bus (Tinfish Press)
Elizabeth Soto, Eulogies (Tinfish Press)
Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory [saina] (Omnidawn Press)
Lily Hoang, Changing (Fairy Tale Review Press)
Reginald Dwayne Betts, Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books)
Olga García Echeverría, Falling Angels: Cuentos y Poemas (Calaca Press)
Eduardo Galeano, Soccer in Sun and Shadow (Verso Books)

I am also reading Evie Shockley’s manuscript of her forthcoming second poetry collection, the new black.”

Check out Jon’s poem, “[we left the camera]” and Barbara ‘s pieces, “13. Black Jesus” and “10. For Al Robles” in Lantern Review, Issue 1.  For more information on the poets themselves, visit them online at jonpineda.com and barbarajanereyes.com, respectively.