The 29th Annual Asian American Showcase Kickoff Event

Friday, May 1, 2026
Mingle: 5:00 PM - 5:45 PM
Films: 5:45 PM- 7:00 PM
Poetry: 7:00 PM - 8:15 PM

HAIBAYÔ
1132 W Argyle St, Chicago, IL 60640

In collaboration with Kundiman Midwest, we’re celebrating the start of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month with an evening of cinema and poetry! Join us for Our Stories: An Evening of AAPI Short Films and Poetry, the official kickoff event for The 29th Annual Asian American Showcase.

Come early to connect with Chicago film lovers, writers, and creatives during our community mixer, then stay to experience a celebration of AAPI voices through film and poetry. After a screening of literary-inspired documentaries and experimental animation, enjoy a live reading by poets Lisa Low, Meg Kim, Dawn Angelicca Barcelona, and Darshita Jain.

Presented in partnership with:

KUNDIMAN
https://www.kundiman.org/

Kundiman is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature. Kundiman creates a space where Asian Americans can explore, through art, the unique challenges that face the new and ever changing diaspora. We see the arts as a tool of empowerment, of education and liberation, and of addressing proactively the legacy we will leave for our future.

To extend the vision of community building for Asian American writers everywhere, Kundiman has developed a national network of regional groups to host their own events. This event is co-sponsored by Kundiman Midwest.

HAIBAYO
https://haibayo.com/

HAIBAYÔ is a creative initiative that aims to energize Asia on Argyle.

Featured Poets

Lisa Low is the author of Replica (2026) from the University of Wisconsin Press and Crown for the Girl Inside (2023), winner of the Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest from YesYes Books. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ecotone, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and elsewhere, and her essay “How to Apologize” won the 2020 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize. She is the recipient of a 2023 Pushcart Prize and has an MFA from Indiana University and a PhD from the University of Cincinnati, where she served as associate editor at The Cincinnati Review.

Darshita Jain is an arts administrator, cultural worker, and poet in the city of Chicago. In the last decade she has finished her masters in Arts Journalism, worked as Program Director at Woman Made Gallery and currently works as the Director of Outreach & Artist Programs at Lillstreet Art Center. She is on the Board for the Chicago Poetry Center and serves as the essays editor at Honey Literary. Her writing can be found in Sixty Inches from Center, Chicago Reader, Hooligan Magazine and more.

Meg Kim is the author of the chapbook Invisible Cartographies (New Delta Review 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ninth Letter, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, and Nimrod International Journal, among others. They are the recipient of a writing grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and have received support from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and Sundress Academy for the Arts. Meg holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and currently teaches a class called Writing Chicago as an adjunct for Wheaton College.

Dawn Angelicca Barcelona is the author of Roundtrip (2025), her debut chapbook by Finishing Line Press. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Tyger Quarterly, Brink, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. Winner of the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award in Poetry in 2022, Dawn is an alumna of Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, VONA, The Fulbright Program and more.

The Short Films

Yu & Me

Directed by Esther Chan, Claudine Cho
https://www.oofstories.com/work/yu-we-books
IG: oofstories
Trailer

When a fire destroys a beloved Chinatown bookstore, its hyper-independent owner learns that community is necessary for survival.

The Bird, the Girl and the Typhoon

Directed and Animated by Angeline Marie Michael Meitzler
https://angeline-meitzler.com/projects/thebird

An elder, migrant Filipino nurse, following the same routine for 40 years, wakes up in her now-grown daughter's old bedroom. She remembers a farmer from her childhood who once told her that the end of the typhoon season and the arrival of the harvest will begin with the sight of a red-colored bird.

In a subversion of colonial messages which signal that safety, security and prosperity are given in proximity to imperial empires, she transforms throughout the morning into the weather, the bird, the harvest and her own internal force.

Cindy Tran: From Here to Here

Directed by Xinyan Yu

From family estrangement to New York City’s overlooked restaurants, Cindy Tran’s poems capture what’s hidden, honest, and beautiful about being human. She invites us into the in-between, where we embrace difficult experiences and reimagine the possibilities of poetry.