St. Louis Pan Asian Collective (STL PAC)

Whether you are a serious writer, casual reader, or passionate journal-keeper, you are invited to join other Asian and Asian-American creatives for an evening of community and connection.

Join us on Tuesday, June 9, from 6-8pm at Leviathan Bookstore (3211 S Grand Blvd). We will begin with a short reading and panel discussion featuring local writers Melody S. Gee, Minsoo Kang, & Jasmine Sawers, followed by an informal reception with Asian-inspired soft drinks and desserts catered by Cake by Jade.

Please note that this event is intended for Asian and Asian-American identifying creatives. This includes those who identify as mixed-race, adoptees, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Central Asian, West Asian, and East Asian.

Organized by Lauren Yu-Ting Bo with funding support from the Regional Arts Commission.

Panelist Bios
Melody S. Gee is a Chinese-American writer from Cerritos, California, who has called St. Louis home for the past 18 years. She lives here in the South Grand neighborhood with her husband and daughters. She is the author of three poetry collections and, most recently, a collection of memoir essays titled "We Carry Smoke and Paper: The Grief and Hope of Conversion." She is a Kundiman fellow in poetry and fiction, and her work has received support from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. Last month, she was a speaker at the Calvin Festival on Faith and Writing. She is currently a grants manager at the Incarnate Word Foundation and is working on a new collection of poems.

Minsoo Kang is originally from South Korea, and he is currently a professor of history at the University of Missouri - St. Louis. He has published books on European history and Korean history, and has translated classic Korean novels into English, including 'The Story of Hong Gildong' which is a Penguin Classic. In addition to a book of short stories, in 2024, he published his debut novel 'The Melancholy of Untold History' which was selected as one of ten best fantasy novels of the year by the New York Times and was awarded the best fantasy novel prize by the Mythopoeic Society.

Jasmine Sawers is a Kundiman and Lambda Literary fellow whose work has won awards from such publications as Ploughshares, Fractured Lit, Prime Number Magazine, and NANO Fiction, and has been anthologized in Norton's Flash Fiction America, Best Microfiction, and A Flame Called Indiana. Their first book, The Anchored World: Flash Fairy Tales and Folklore, was a finalist for the 2023 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. Originally from Buffalo, New York, they now live outside St. Louis and serve as the fiction editor for Blanket Gravity, a literary journal centering mental health.