My friend, the brilliant poet Pireeni Sundaralingam has just sent an announcement about one wild and crazy literary event and one more subdued literary event, both in Los Angeles this weekend.

I pass this message along to all you LA literati:

From Pireeni:

I'm involved in an amazing one-of-a-kind event in LA  this weekend and was wondering if you'd be able to help me spread the word. It's a hilarious live improv battle between two teams of poets on stage: involves name-calling, lying, debating, and duking it out line break by line break. There's an East Asian team pitted against a South Asian team and the Japanese American National Museum has kindly offered to host this duel-to-the-death. Promises to be very entertaining and should have an appeal for a wide range of audience, not just poets.

It'd be lovely to see you there. And would you be able to help me spread the word? It'd be great to have a good turn-out so feel free to forward this email to anyone you think would be interested in watching blood, rice and sonnets hitting the fan...

"When the Mango Hits the Fan: A Tag team poetry-read off"

Saturday 22 January 2011;          2:00pm - 4:00pm

 Japanese American National Museum:

http://www.janm.org/

369 East First Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012

tel: 213 625 0414

 Team 1:  Sesshu Foster,  Karen Anhwei Lee, Viet Le, Amy Uysematsu

Team 2:  Vandana Khanna, Bhargavi Mandava, Amar Ravva, Pireeni Sundaralingam

I'm also part of a more traditional poetry reading at Beyond Baroque,

celebrating INDIVISIBLE, our new anthology of contemporary South Asian American Poetry (U. Arkansas Press).

 BEYOND BAROQUE

http://www.beyondbaroque.org/

 Friday 21 January; 7.30- 9.30pm

Address:  681 Venice Bl. Venice, CA 90291
Phone 1-310-822-3006

Tickets*: $7 general admission; $5 students; Free for members

 Poetry reading and book signing

with Vandana Khanna , Bhargavi Mandava, Amar Ravva,  and Pireeni Sundaralingam

Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry

http://www.indivisibleanthology.com