Kaya Press Chapbook Launch & Reading
🪄 Join me on Sunday 12/15 at Neighbors & Friends in Pasadena to celebrate the launch of my first chapbook, Double Happiness with Kaya Press ❤️🎋
You can preorder Double Happiness now at Kaya's website! The chapbook will also be available for sale at the event.
This has been a long journey and one of the hardest years of my life but I am so blessed to close out this dragon year in community & celebration at my new favorite Middle Eastern owned cafe, Neighbors and Friends 🐉 I will be reading with Jen & Kaitlin.
‼️‼️‼️ Important note: This event is PUBLIC INVITE OPEN TO ALL but this RSVP is mostly for private reference of who I know will be there. Since it's hosted by Kaya I don't know who else the event will bring in. The launch officially ends at 4:30 but if you want to hang after some friends will be around :~) No +1s here because I wanted to keep it individual names. Feel free to pass this around, thank you & hope to see you soon ❤️
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What comes before a language and a home, and what comes after—if “after” exists at all?
The first title from Kaya Press’ Milkteeth imprint, Maya Lu’s Double Happiness meanders through family gardens and Chinese zodiac cycles, personal and political histories. Responding to a 对联 passed on from her mother, Lu tends to the lost and the inherited, “choosing what to dig out / and what to leave behind” between generations. Blending lyric vignettes and archival photos, Double Happiness weaves dreamlike between the ever-changing landscapes of Beijing and California and the strange gaps of what memory carries.
Written by Maya Lu, designed by Liz Li and printed with risograph at Tiny Splendor in Los Angeles, California. Photos by Maya Lu, couplet and calligraphy by 思其.
Eternally grateful for my Kaya Press editors Austin and Kaitlin (and Neela), my designer and dear friend Liz, my family, and everyone who has supported Double Happiness in all its forms - from vignettes, to prototype zine, to multimedia exhibition, to hybrid poetry chapbook