Evening features emerging and established writers whose lives and writing have been influenced by their movement from one culture to another. We will examine how their journeys have impacted their understanding of themselves as individuals, as part of and participants in various cultural communities, and as people in transition. Li-Young Lee and Aleksandar Hemon?both immigrants to the United States?will read with student writers from Loyola Community Literacy Center and Northeastern Illinois University who have written essays titled "How l Came to the United States.

Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese parents. His father, who was a personal physician to Mao Zedong, relocated his family to Indonesia, where he helped found GamaUel University. In 1959 the Lee family fled the country to escape anti-Chinese sentiment and after a five-year trek through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, they settled in the United States. Li-Young Lee attended the Universities of Pittsburgh and Arizona, and the State University of New York at Brockport. He is the author of several books including "The City in Which l Love You" which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection. His honors include a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writer's Award, grants from the National. Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship.

A writer and journalist from Sarajevo, Aleksandar Hemon came to the U.S. in 1992 as a tourist and found himself stranded when his hometown fell under siege. Since then, his various incarnations have included Greenpeace canvasser, sandwich assembly-line worker, bike messenger. bookstore salesperson, and ESL teacher. His stories have appeared in numerous publications including TriQuarterty and The New Yorker. He has published an acctalmed book of short stories, The Question of Bruno, and most recently a novel, Nowhere Man.