The Department of Asian Languages and Literature and the Center for Southeast Asia and Its Diasporas welcome three distinguished authors to UW to discuss their work. This book panel event will feature individual author presentations and a discussion moderated by Professors Bich-Ngoc Turner and Linh Thủy Nguyễn. Books will be available for sale through mam's books. 

SPEAKERS

Susan Lieu | Author of the memoir The Manicurist's Daughter

Susan Lieu is a Vietnamese American author, playwright, and performer who tells stories that refuse to be forgotten. A daughter of nail salon workers, she took her award-winning autobiographical solo show “140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother” on a ten-city national tour, with sold-out premieres and accolades from the Los Angeles Times, NPR, and American Theatre. She is a proud alumna of Harvard College, Yale School of Management, and Hedgebrook.

Putsata Reang | Author of the memoir Ma and Me

Putsata Reang is an award-winning author and journalist who has lived and worked in more than a dozen countries, including Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Thailand. With degrees in journalism and English from the University of Oregon, she worked as a reporter for major metropolitan newspapers, including San Jose’s The Mercury News and The Seattle Times, before moving abroad to train journalists in investigative and political reporting in conflict and post-conflict countries.

L. Ayu Saraswati | Author of Scarred: A Feminist Journey Through Pain

Dr. L. Ayu Saraswati is professor in women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Hawai’i. She is the author and co-editor of five books, including Seeing Beauty, Sensing Race in Transnational Indonesia, which won the 2013 National Women’s Studies Association Gloria Anzaldúa book award. Her work was included in 2020 among Meridians’ most impactful works of the past twenty years, and has appeared in The Economist, Al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle, Vogue Australia, SBS Radio Australia, and Kompas, among others.