Cathy Linh Che In Conversation with Michael Dumanis

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Join Michael Dumanis in a Q&A with visiting poet Cathy Linh Che, author of Becoming Ghost, a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award and writer of the documentary short film We Were the Scenery, shortlisted for a 2025 Academy Award.

Cathy Linh Che is the daughter of Vietnam War refugees. She is the author of Becoming Ghost (Washington Square Press, 2025), and Split (Alice James Books, 2014), winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, and Association of Asian American Studies’s Best Poetry Book Award. She is also the co-author of the children’s book An Asian American A to Z: a Children’s Guide to Our History (Haymarket Books, 2023). Her film We Were the Scenery won the Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction at the Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. She lives in New York City, teaches in the MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles, and is the Executive Director of Kundiman,  a national organization dedicated to the creation and cultivation of Asian American creative writing

Photo credit: Jess X. Snow