Nellie Wong's Keynote Address from AALF 2024

On September 14th the Asian American Literature Festival Collective (AALFC) opened the week-long 2024 Asian American Literary Festival, Cosmic Kinship. The festival aims to make literature accessible to all through inclusive and hybrid events, fostering a literary constellation spanning the globe.

In San Francisco we co-presented alongside the Chinese Culture Center, the AALF SF Bay Area Book Fair! We are so grateful to all of our participating authors and attendees for making this such a special event! The book fair offered a wide range of literary styles from poetry to non-fiction to speculative fiction and more! And we were blessed with an important and timely keynote speech by Nellie Wong, who just celebrated her 90th years and whose newest publication, Nothing Like Freedom, marks her 50th year as a published poet! Nellie was scheduled to speak at the 2023 Asian American Literature Festival before it was canceled abruptly by the Smithsonian. We were honored to be able to provide her the space to share what she had planned to bring (updated for this current iteration) and for those who missed it we’re sharing it below!