Loyalty is honored to host a virtual reading & fundraiser in support of the AAPI community with a truly incredible line up of authors! This event will be held digitally via Crowdcast. Click here to register for the event with a donation of any amount of your choice. All the funds donated as a ticket will go to Asian Americans Advancing Justice and the profits from book sales of titles linked to the event will go to Red Canary Song and Stop AAPI Hate. Please email events@loyaltybookstores.com with any questions or inquiries.

Thank you to all of our participating authors: Jami Attenberg, Cinelle Barnes, Chaya Bhuvaneswar, Nicole Chung, Preeti Chhibber, Kat Chow, Alyssa Cole, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Mira Jacob, Sarah Kuhn, RO Kwon, Minh Lê, Min Jin Lee, T Kira Madden, Mia Manansala, Alisha Rai, Clint Smith, and Meredith Talusan.

Jami Attenberg is the author of seven books of fiction. Her memoir, I CAME ALL THIS WAY TO MEET YOU: WRITING MYSELF HOME, will be published in January 2022.

Cinelle Barnes is a memoirist, essayist, and educator from Manila, Philippines, and is the author of MONSOON MANSION: A MEMOIR (Little A, 2018, Booklist starred review) and MALAYA: ESSAYS ON FREEDOM (Little A, 2019), and the editor the New York Times New & Noteworthy book, A MEASURE OF BELONGING: 21 WRITERS OF COLOR ON THE NEW AMERICAN SOUTH (Hub City Press, 2020). She earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Converse College. Her writing has appeared or been featured in the New York Times, Longreads, Garden & Gun, Electric Literature, Buzzfeed Reader, Catapult, Literary Hub, Hyphen, and CNN Philippines, among others. Her work has received fellowships and grants from VONA, Kundiman, the John and Susan Bennett Memorial Arts Fund, the Lowcountry Quarterly Arts Grant, and Capita. Her debut memoir was listed as a Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 by Bustle and nominated for the 2018 Reading Women Nonfiction Award. Barnes was a Focus Fellowship artist-in-residence at AIR Serenbe in 2020, a short-term writer-in-residence at City of Asylum in 2019, and the 2018-19 writer-in-residence at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, SC, where she and her family live. She is currently at work on a nonfiction narrative book on climate justice, the Philippine water crisis, and Philippine spirituality and folklore.

Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a physician and writer with work in Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Electric Lit, The Millions, Joyland, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. Her poetry and prose juxtapose Hindu epics, other myths and histories, and the survival of sexual harassment and racialized sexual violence by diverse women of color. She has received a MacDowell Colony fellowship, Sewanee Writers Conference scholarship and Henfield award for her writing. Follow her on Twitter at @chayab77 including for upcoming readings and events.

Nicole Chung is the author of the national bestseller All You Can Ever Know. Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Library Journal, and many other outlets, All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, an Indies Choice Honor Book, and an official Junior Library Guild Selection. Chung’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, TIME, The Guardian, and Vulture, among others, and she also writes a weekly advice column for Slate. Her next book is forthcoming from Ecco Books/HarperCollins.

Preeti Chhibber is an author, speaker, & freelancer. She's written for SYFY, Polygon, and The Mary Sue, among others. Her debut middle grade and picture books, Orientation (Marvel’s Avenger’s Assembly #1) and A Jedi You Will Be, were released in Fall 2020. She has several books and anthology appearances on the way, but for now you can find her co-hosting the podcasts Desi Geek Girls and Tar Valon or Bust. Learn more at PreetiChhibber.com

Kat Chow is a writer and a journalist. She was a reporter at NPR, where she was a founding member of the Code Switch team. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic and on RadioLab, among others. She’s one of Pop Culture Happy Hour’s fourth chairs. She’s received residency fellowships from the Millay Colony and the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat.

Alyssa Cole is a New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of romance (historical, contemporary, and sci-fi) and thrillers. Her Civil War-set espionage romance An Extraordinary Union was the American Library Association’s RUSA Best Romance for 2018, and A Princess in Theory was one of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2018. She’s contributed to publications including Bustle, Shondaland, The Toast, Vulture, RT Book Reviews, and Heroes and Heartbreakers, and her books have received critical acclaim from The New York Times, Library Journal, BuzzFeed, Kirkus, Booklist, Jezebel, Vulture, Book Riot, Entertainment Weekly, and various other outlets. When she’s not working, she can usually be found watching anime or wrangling her pets.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine is from Denver, Colorado. Her fiction has appeared in The American Scholar, Boston Review, Bellevue Literary Review, The Idaho Review, Southwestern American Literature, and elsewhere. Fajardo-Anstine has received fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Hedgebrook. She received her MFA from the University of Wyoming and has lived across the country from Durango, Colorado, to Key West, Florida.

Mira Jacob Mira Jacob is a novelist, memoirist, illustrator, and cultural critic. Her graphic memoir Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award, and her novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus Reviews, the Boston Globe, Goodreads, Bustle, and The Millions. She lives in Brooklyn.

Sarah Kuhn is the author of the popular Heroine Complex novels—a series starring Asian American superheroines. The first book is a Locus bestseller, an RT Reviewers’ Choice Award nominee, and one of the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog’s Best Books of 2016. Her YA debut, the beloved Japan-set romantic comedy I Love You So Mochi, is a Junior Library Guild selection and a nominee for YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults. She has also penned a variety of short fiction and comics, including the critically acclaimed graphic novel Shadow of the Batgirl for DC Comics and the Star Wars audiobook original Doctor Aphra. Her newest novel, From Little Tokyo, With Love—a modern fairy tale with a half-Japanese heroine—is due out in May 2021. Little Tokyo is a Junior Library Guild selection and was recently chosen as Penguin Random House’s latest One World, One Book title. Additionally, Sarah was a finalist for both the CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment) New Writers Award and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. A third generation Japanese American, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and an overflowing closet of vintage treasures.

RO Kwon's nationally bestselling first novel, The Incendiaries, was named a best book of the year by over forty publications and is being translated into seven languages. She coedited the anthology Kink, forthcoming in 2021. Kwon's writing is published in the New York Times, The Guardian, The Paris Review, NPR, and elsewhere.

Minh Lê is the award-winning author of the picture books Drawn Together (winner of the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature), Lift (a Washington Post Best Book of the Year), The Perfect Seat, and Let Me Finish (all published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers). He also wrote Green Lantern: Legacy, his debut middle grade graphic novel for DC Comics and has several forthcoming projects including A Lotus for You, the authorized picture book biography of the world-renowned Zen Buddhist monk and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Thích Nhất Hạnh. In addition to writing books, Minh has written for a number of national publications, including the New York Times, The Huffington Post, and NPR.

Min Jin Lee is a recipient of fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation (2018), the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard (2018-2019), and the New York Foundation for the Arts (2000). Her novel Pachinko (2017) was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, a runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the Medici Book Club Prize, and a New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017. A New York Times Bestseller, Pachinko was also a Top 10 Books of the Year for BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the New York Public Library. Pachinko was a selection for “Now Read This,” the joint book club of PBS NewsHour and The New York Times. It was on over 75 best books of the year lists, including NPR, PBS, and CNN. Pachinko will be translated into 30 languages. In 2019, Apple ordered to series a television adaptation of Pachinko, and President Barack Obama selected Pachinko for his recommended reading list, calling it, “a powerful story about resilience and compassion.” Lee’s debut novel Free Food for Millionaires (2007) was a Top 10 Books of the Year for The Times of London, NPR’s Fresh Air, USA Today, and a national bestseller. In 2019, Free Food for Millionaires was a finalist for One Book, One New York, a city-wide reading program. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, NPR’s Selected Shorts, One Story, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Conde Nast Traveler, The Times of London, and Wall Street Journal. She served three consecutive seasons as a Morning Forum columnist of the Chosun Ilbo of South Korea. In 2018, Lee was named as an Adweek Creative 100 for being one of the “10 Writers and Editors Who are Changing the National Conversation” and a Frederick Douglass 200. In 2019, Lee was inducted in the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame. She received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Monmouth College. She will be a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College from 2019-2022. She serves as a trustee of PEN America, a director of the Authors Guild and on the National Advisory Board of the Immigration Initiative at Harvard.

T Kira Madden is an APIA writer, photographer, and amateur magician. She is the founding editor in chief of No Tokens, and facilitates writing workshops for homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals. A 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in nonfiction literature, she has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, Tin House, DISQUIET, Summer Literary Seminars, and Yaddo, where she was selected for the 2017 Linda Collins Endowed Residency Award. She lives in New York City and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Mia Manansala (she/her) is a writer and certified book coach from Chicago who loves books, baking, and bad-ass women. She uses humor (and murder) to explore aspects of the Filipino diaspora, queerness, and her millennial love for pop culture. Her debut novel, ARSENIC AND ADOBO, comes out May 4, 2021 with Berkley/Penguin Random House.

Alisha Rai pens award-winning contemporary romances. Her novels have been featured on the IndieNext and the LibraryReads lists, and been named Best Books of the Year by Washington Post, NPR, New York Public Library, Amazon, Entertainment Weekly, Reader’s Digest, Kirkus, “O” the Oprah Magazine, and Cosmopolitan Magazine. When she’s not writing, Alisha is traveling or tweeting. To find out more about her books or to sign up for her newsletter, visit www.alisharai.com.

Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent. The book won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He has received fellowships from New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review and elsewhere. Born and raised in New Orleans, he received his B.A. in English from Davidson College and his Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University. 

Meredith Talusan (she/they) is the author of the critically-acclaimed memoir Fairest from Viking/Penguin Random House, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. She is also an award-winning journalist who has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, WIRED, SELF, and Condé Nast Traveler, among many other publications, and has contributed to several essay and fiction collections. She has received awards from GLAAD, The Society of Professional Journalists, and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. She is also the founding executive editor of them, Condé Nast’s LGBTQ+ digital platform, where she is currently contributing editor.

Please note Loyalty has a zero tolerance policy for harassment or intimidation of any kind during this virtual event.

AAPI Virtual Reading and Fundraiser!