Bel Canto Books is delighted to host Grace Loh Prasad, author of THE TRANSLATOR'S DAUGHTER and E. P. Tuazon, author of A PROFESSIONAL LOLA in conversation.
Kindly RSVP so we can plan accordingly. Please stay home if you feel sick.
This event will be held indoors at KUBO LB (3976 Atlantic Avenue, Long Beach CA).
EVENT SCHEDULE
5:45PM - Event check-in begins
6:00pm - Welcome & event start
6:15-7:00pm - Author reading, conversation, and Q&A
7:00pm-8:00pm - Book signing & shopping time
8:00pm - Event ends
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR'S DAUGHTER
Born in Taiwan, Grace Loh Prasad was two years old when the threat of political persecution under Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship drove her family to the United States, setting her up to become an “accidental immigrant.” The family did not know when they would be able to go home again; this exile lasted long enough for Prasad to forget her native Taiwanese language and grow up American. Having multilingual parents—including a father who worked as a translator—meant she never had to develop the fluency to navigate Taiwan on visits. But when her parents moved back to Taiwan permanently when she was in college and her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she recognized the urgency of forging a stronger connection with her birthplace before it was too late. As she recounts her journey to reclaim her heritage in The Translator’s Daughter, Prasad unfurls themes of memory, dislocation, and loss in all their rich complexity. The result is a unique immigration story about the loneliness of living in a diaspora, the search for belonging, and the meaning of home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grace Loh Prasad is the author of The Translator’s Daughter (Mad Creek Books/The Ohio State University Press, 2024), a debut memoir about living between languages, navigating loss, and the search for belonging. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Longreads, The Offing, Hyperallergic, Catapult, KHÔRA, and elsewhere. A member of the Writers Grotto and the AAPI writers collective Seventeen Syllables, Prasad lives in the Bay Area.
ABOUT A PROFESSIONAL LOLA
A Professional Lola is a collection of short stories that blend literary fiction with the surreal to present the contemporary Filipino American experience and its universal themes of love, family, and identity. A family hires an actress to play their beloved grandmother at a party; a couple craving Filipino food rob a panaderya; a coven of Filipino witches cast a spell on their husbands; a Lolo transforms into a Lola. These are just a few of the stories in the collection that represent its roster of stories beautifully grounded in culture and vividly and meticulously painted to make the absurd seem mundane and the commonplace, sinister. A Professional Lola embodies the joy, mystery, humor, sadness, hunger, and family that inhabit modern-day Filipino American virtues.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
E. P. Tuazon is a Filipino-American writer from Los Angeles. They have work in several publications and their forthcoming book is called A PROFESSIONAL LOLA (Red Hen Press 2024). They were chosen by ZZ Packer as the winner of the 2022 AWP Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction. They are a member of Advintage Press and The Blank Page Writing Club. In their spare time, they like to go to Filipino Seafood Markets to gossip with the crabs.
ABOUT BEL CANTO BOOKS
Founded by Jhoanna Belfer, a Filipina-American poet and former hospitality executive, Bel Canto Books offers a curated selection of fiction, nonfiction and children's books, organized around a theme of the month, in particular celebrating books by women and people of color. Learn more at belcantobooks.net.
ABOUT KUBO LB
KUBO LB is a creative community space for Filipinx, BIPOC, LGBTQ, and Women led small businesses. KUBO LB is a space to support and educate small businesses through retail, business workshops and more. Learn more at kubolb.com.
