A poet and a playwright from Australia. A novelist and a journalist from Pakistan. A poet from Belarus and a novelist from Florida. Their journeys have all been different, but all have found themselves living and writing in Ithaca. And their stories have all been captivating.

The online reading series “Odysseys: Ithaca Writers on Exile, Wandering, and Searching for Home” wraps up on Tuesday, May 18 at 7 p.m. with young adult and children’s book author Minfong Ho and poet and essayist Kenneth A. McClane. Novelist and ICOA board member Edward Hower will moderate. The Zoom session is free, but registration is required. Register here.

Minfong Ho was born in Myanmar of ethnic Chinese parents, raised in Thailand, and educated in Taiwan and the United States. She has written several books for young adults and children, mostly set in Southeast Asia. These include The Clay Marble and Hush! She worked as a journalist in Singapore, taught at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, and ran a food program on the Thai-Khmer border for Cambodian refugees. Although she has remained a U.S. Permanent Alien for over 35 years, she says Ithaca has come to feel like home.

Kenneth A. McClane is Cornell’s W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Literature Emeritus and the author of eight books of poems, including A Tree Beyond Telling and Take Five: Collected Poems, 1971-1986. He has also written two collections of personal essays: Walls (1992) and Color: Essays on Race, Family and History (2009). He has served on the board of trustees of Adelphi University, and on the board of directors of the Tompkins County Library Foundation, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, the New York Council for the Humanities, and the Tompkins County Community Foundation.

You can watch previous sessions on the Tompkins County Public Library’s YouTube channel.

• Session 1:  Gail Holst-Warhaft & Aoise Stratford, moderated by David Guaspari (watch on YouTube)
• Session 2: Sorayya Khan & Raza Rumi, moderated by Barbara Adams (watch on YouTube)
• Session 3: Valzhyna Mort & Raul Palma, moderated by Kate Blackwood (watch on YouTube)

“Odysseys: Ithaca Writers on Exile, Wandering, and Searching for Home” is organized by Ithaca City of Asylum and cosponsored by Buffalo Street Books, Global Cornell, Cornell Migrations, Ithaca College Department of Writing, Odyssey Bookstore, Story House Ithaca, and Tompkins County Public Library.

Thanks also to the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County, which has included this session in its Spring Writes series.