
Join us for a live recording of Western Carolina University's Diversity Dialogues series at the East Asheville Library. This Spring Literary Festival pre-event will feature two Asian-American mental health practitioners in a conversation about poetry and healing. Malaprop's is pleased to partner with the WCU Spring Literary Festival and East Asheville Library to present this event.
The discussion is free and open to the public. (You do not need to register.)
Poet and psychiatrist Eric Tran will join M. Jay Manalo, psychologist and associate director of WCU's counseling & psychological services, to discuss their work and lives. Along the way, they will take questions from the audience in this live recording.
Eric Tran is a queer Vietnamese poet and the author of Mouth, Sugar, and Smoke and The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer. His work has been featured in All Things Considered, Best of the Net, and Poetry Daily. He is a psychiatrist living in Portland, Oregon.
A child of Filipino immigrants, M. Jay Manalo is a licensed psychologist and associate director of WCU's counseling and pyshcological services. He earned his Ph.D. in counseling psychology from The University of Georgia, where his doctoral dissertation research examined the counseling needs and strengths of Hmong American students. His counseling interests include depression, anxiety, stress, life transitions, AD/HD, LGBTQ identity, multicultural psychology, social skills concerns, and developmental disabilities. He serves as a board member of the Association for Counseling Center Training Agencies (ACCTA) and is a site visitor for the American Psychological Association’s Commission on Accreditation.