Friends of the Mendocino College Library are helping celebrate Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month at Mendocino by sponsoring a reading by Bryan Thao Worra on Thursday, May 7, 2015 at 7:00 pm in library classroom 4210. The reading is free to the public.

Bryan Thao Worra is a Lao-American writer living in the Bay Area. He holds over 20 awards for his poetry and community leadership, including an NEA Fellowship in Literature. He is the author of 6 books with writing appearing in over 100 international publications including Australia, Canada, England, Scotland, Germany, France, Singapore, China, Korea, Chile, Pakistan, and across the US.

Born in 1973 in Vientiane, Laos, during the Lao civil war, he came to the U.S. at six months old, adopted by a civilian pilot flying in Laos.  Living in California, he was naturalized in 1976 during the U.S. Bicentennial. In 2003, he was reunited with his biological family for the first time in 30 years; they had escaped from Laos to Modesto, California.

Worra is the first Lao American professional member of the Horror Writer Association and is an officer of the international Science Fiction Poetry Association. He is the Creative Works Editor of the Journal on Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement. His work is on display at the Smithsonian's national traveling exhibit, "I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story." In 2012, he was selected to be a Cultural Olympian during the London Summer Games representing Laos. His 2013 book Demonstra was selected as Book of the Year by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. You can visit his website at http://thaoworra.blogspot.com  for more information about the author.

This event is sponsored by Friends of the Mendocino College Library, an affiliate group of the Mendocino College Foundation.

Mendocino College is located at 1000 Hensley Creek Road in Ukiah, CA.