Join us to celebrate Jane Wong's recent Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association award for her memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City. Jane will appear onstage to accept the award and discuss the book. Ally Ang, Quenton Baker, and c.r. glasgow will join Jane onstage.

In the late 1980s on the Jersey shore, Jane Wong watches her mother shake ants from an MSG bin behind the family’s Chinese restaurant. She is a hungry daughter frying crab rangoon for lunch, a child sneaking naps on bags of rice, a playful sister scheming to trap her brother in the freezer before he traps her first. Jane is part of a family staking their claim to the American dream, even as this dream crumbles. Beneath Atlantic City’s promise lies her father’s gambling addiction, an addiction that causes him to disappear for days and ultimately leads to the loss of the restaurant.

In her debut memoir, Jane Wong tells a new story about Atlantic City, one that resists a single identity, a single story as she writes about making do with what you have—and what you don’t. What does it mean, she asks, to be both tender and angry? What is strength without vulnerability—and humor? Filled with beauty found in unexpected places, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is a resounding love song of the Asian American working class, a portrait of how we become who we are, and a story of lyric wisdom to hold and to share.

Jane Wong is the author of the poetry collections How to Not Be Afraid of Everything and Overpour and the memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City. An associate professor of creative writing at Western Washington University, she grew up in New Jersey and currently lives in Seattle, Washington.

Ally Ang is a gaysian poet & editor based in Seattle. They have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and MacDowell, and their debut poetry collection, Let the Moon Wobble, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2025. Ally unequivocally supports the liberation of all colonized and oppressed peoples, from Palestine to Sudan to Congo to Haiti to Puerto Rico to Hawai'i to West Papua to Turtle Island and beyond, and they urge you to do everything in your power to resist the normalization of genocide and halt the machinery of empire.

Quenton Baker is a poet, educator, and Cave Canem fellow. Their current focus is black interiority and the afterlife of slavery. Their work has appeared in The Offing, Jubilat, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus and elsewhere. They are a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from Artist Trust. They were a 2019 Robert Rauschenberg Artist in Residence and a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. They are the author of we pilot the blood (The 3rd Thing, 2021) and ballast (Haymarket Books, 2023).

c.r. glasgow (doc) is a Queer, first-gen Caribbean-American somatic psychologist, interdisciplinary healing artist, Fool, and public speaker. c’s work has been supported by fellowships through UCross, VONA, The Watering Hole, Hurston/Wright, and Anaphora Arts. The work is committed to the interiority and sonics of Black Queer womanhood, nostalgia, death/rebirth, non-duality, and the cosmos/portals. Their chapbook the Devils that raised Us was longlisted by Frontier Poetry and had a 2023 Best of the Net nomination in poetry. c’s work is forthcoming in Obsidian, Black Lawrence Press, and Lion’s Roar. c can be found mimicking sounds, playing steel pan, and finding healthier versions of 80s corner store snacks.