2025 Rainbow Book Fair Panel
Asian Love Stories: Romance, Resistance, and Revolution
Saturday, May 10th, 3.00-4.15 PM
The LGBT Community Center at 208 W 13th Street, New York, NY 10011

What are the resources in traditional Asian folktales, mythologies, and other forms of narratives for depicting queer romance, discovering queer resistance, and designing the queer revolution of literature? Ng Yi-Sheng (LION CITY), Aruni Kashyap (THE WAY YOU WANT TO BE LOVED), Sahar Romani (THE OPENING), and Pauline Park will read from their fiction and poetry and discuss the social and political uses of Asian love stories. Moderated by Jee Leong Koh.

Ng Yi-Sheng is a Singaporean writer, researcher and activist, with a keen interest in the forgotten histories and mythologies of Southeast Asia. His books include the story collection Lion City (winner of the Singapore Literature Prize) and the children’s history book Twisted Temasek. Additionally, he served as editor for A Mosque in the Jungle: Classic Ghost Stories by Othman Wok and EXHALE: an Anthology of Queer Singapore Voices, and as translator for Wong Yoon Wah’s the New Village and Homecomings.

Aruni Kashyap is the author of The Way You Want to Be Loved, The House with a Thousand Stories, and the forthcoming How to Date a Fanatic. Along with editing a collection of stories called How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency, he is the translator of four novels from Assamese to English. He is an Associate Professor of English & Creative Writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia, Athens.

Sahar Romani is the author of The Opening, winner of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Prize. She teaches expository writing at NYU and lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Pauline Park is chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), which she co-founded in 1998. Park co-founded Queens Pride House in 1997 and led it as executive director for three years (2012-2015), becoming the first Asian American transwoman to lead any LGBT community center in the United States.

Jee Leong Koh is the author of Steep Tea, named a Best Book of the Year by UK’s Financial Times and a Finalist by Lambda Literary. His hybrid work Snow at 5 PM won the Singapore Literature Prize in English fiction. His second Carcanet book of poetry is Inspector Inspector.