Bamboo Ridge Issue 128 brings together stories and poems that are both timely and timeless. The works speak to contemporary life and issues, as well as familiar moments grounded in daily experience. Across more than thirty contributors, the writing in Issue 128 is varied in tone-meditative, confrontational, humorous. These are stories that feel lived-in, and poems that absorb. Some offer sharp insight, others invite quiet immersion.
Acclaimed poets Cathy Song and Naomi Shihab Nye have curated an anthology shaped by compassion and poetic insight. In their introduction, the editors reflect on the troubling reality that many words once used to celebrate multiculturalism and belonging are now being flagged in grant applications or discouraged in public discourse. Issue 128 becomes, in its own way, a powerful response that values expression, connection, and the literary arts as essential tools of understanding and resistance.
In the spirit of Bamboo Ridge's enduring mission, this issue continues a legacy of publishing work that may not find a home in more commercial venues: literature that speaks to hybrid identities, resists easy categorization, and recognizes the local as inseparable from the global.
These are works that ask not only where we are, but who we are and what it means to write, read, and remember in a time of shifting language and political erasure. The collection also features the work of Hawai'i-born visual artist Marc Aquino-Michaels, whose intaglio etchings and aquatint prints complement the issue. It's a volume to sit with, return to, and share.
Contributors:
Nancy Aleck, Shirley Ancheta, Keerti Brown, Nathaniel Calhoun, Samuel Davenport, Mitchell Dwyer, Thomas Iannucci, Scott Kikkawa, Wing Tek Lum, Dana Lyons, Robert MacLean, Jonathon Medeiros, Tyler Miranda, Tamara Moan, Dawn Morais, Zach Keali'i Murphy, Lindsay Nash, Margaret Speck Ogawa, Derek Otsuji, Christy Passion, Eric Paul Shaffer, Susan Soong, Bill Teter, Cory Tobias, Ken Tokuno, Jean Yamasaki Toyama, Hannah Trees, Mehana Blaich Vaughan, Laura Wang, Wendi White, Susan Wurtzburg, Chris Yamamoto, Michelle M.W. Young
Poet Cathy Song was born and raised in Hawaii. Her work draws on her rich Korean-Chinese ancestry as well as her experiences as an American and a woman. Her first volume of poems, Picture Bride, won the 1982 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award and was also nominated for that year's National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other collections include Cloud Moving Hands (2007), The Land of Bliss (2001), School Figures (1994), and Frameless Windows, Squares of Light (1988). In 1994, she received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is also the author of the short story collection All the Love in the World (2020).
Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a "wandering poet." She has spent more than 40 years traveling the country and the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. Drawing on her Palestinian-American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her experiences traveling in Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the Middle East, Nye uses her writing to attest to our shared humanity. Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes.
