Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series: Cathy Park Hong

Cathy Park Hong comes to Shelton Auditorium on Wednesday, March 17, 2027, for a talk as part of the Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series. If you've read Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, you already know why she's here. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. It's part memoir and part cultural criticism of the Asian American experience, and it was named one of Time's Top 10 Non-Fiction Books of 2020. Time also named Hong one of its 100 Most Influential People of 2021.

Hong is as much a poet as she is a nonfiction writer. She's published three collections: Dance Dance Revolution, which won the Barnard Women Poets Prize, Engine Empire, and Translating Mo'Um. Along the way, she's picked up a Windham-Campbell Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She's also the poetry editor of the New Republic and a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

The talk is part of the Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series, which has brought authors like Toni Morrison, Billy Collins, Kurt Vonnegut, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Atwood, Allen Ginsberg, Sharon Olds, Amy Tan, and Colson Whitehead to Indianapolis over nearly 40 years. Hong is the latest to join that list.

It's free and open to the public, and you don't need a ticket. The talk starts at 7:30 PM at Shelton Auditorium, in the Midtown Arts District.