The University of North Carolina Asheville will celebrate Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month throughout April with a variety of cultural programs. Among the highlights will be a reading by award-winning poet Li-Young Lee at 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 23, in the Highsmith Center Lounge. General admission is $5 at the door.

Lee, who was born in Indonesia to Chinese parents, burst into American literary consciousness with the publication of "Rose" in 1986. Fusing family, culture and history, Lee draws on the language and stories of American and Southeast Asian people to influence his work. He has received numerous literary honors, among them a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and a Writer’s Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. "Rose" earned the New York University’s Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award and his second book, "The City in Which I Love You," was named the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. His latest book, "Winged Seed," is Lee’s personal account of childhood exile and his father's political imprisonment.

Other events include these free programs:

-- Korean American comedian Bobby Lee will have the audience laughing at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 5, in the Highsmith Center Lounge.

-- An Origami workshop will be held at 4 p.m. Sunday, April 8, in the Highsmith Center Coffee House.

-- Marco Lienhard will demonstrate traditional Japanese Taiko drumming at 5:30 p.m. Friday, April 20, in the Dining Hall.

For more information, contact Octavia Wright, UNCA Multicultural Student Programs Coordinator, at 828/251-6671.