Asian American Writers' Workshop

Our Home and the World: Poetry for Laal NYC

Our Home and the World: Poetry for Laal NYC with Nadia Q. Ahmad, Tarfia Faizullah, and Samira Sadeque Join the Asian American Writers’ Workshop for a virtual reading and fundraiser for Laal NYC, featuring Nadia Q. Ahmad, Tarfia Faizullah, and Samira Sadeque. These accomplished journalists and poets celebrate Bengali culture in NYC, explore immigration, gender, mental health, hate speech and find the poetic junctures where “brutality, desire and beauty combine.” We are honored to welcome them to our virtual stage alongside grassroots organization Laal NYC. Laal NYC provides resources to Bengali women in the Bronx so that they can live healthy, engaged and joyful lives. Laal provides Bengali women in the community with a safe space where they can practice literacy and conversational skills as well as learn about health and wellness. Many of Laal’s community members have lost their jobs, are hospitalized, or are taking care of sick parents or grandparents, and are struggling to keep on top of their expenses. In response to Covid-19, LAAL is partnering with Local Zakat, a collective that helps those at home, to create an emergency fund for those who need support with bills, medical expenses, groceries or any other covid-19 related expenses. Two-thirds of the proceeds will support our emergency fund. One-third of all proceeds will support the implementation of Laal’s Fall programs which include workshops on literacy, mental health, and nutrition for women. Click here to donate to Laal’s Covid fund: http://bit.ly/laalrelieffund

Now that we’ve published over 50 podcast episodes, we’re selecting some faves to republish! One of our earliest episodes is Migrant Father Fragment from 2017 feat. authors lê thị diễm thúy, Q.M. Zhang, moderated by Hua Hsu. Listen here: https://aaww.org/aaww-fave-radio-migrant-father-fragment/

I AM DELIBERATE AND AFRAID OF NOTHING: POETRY, PROSE, AND PROTEST with Andrea Abi-Karam, Romaissaa Benzizoune, & Sham-e-Ali Nayeem

I AM DELIBERATE AND AFRAID OF NOTHING: POETRY, PROSE, AND PROTEST with Andrea Abi-Karam, Romaissaa Benzizoune, & Sham-e-Ali Nayeem -- Livestreamed on the Asian American Writers’ page, Minnesota-based Mizna joins the Asian American Writers’ Workshop to present I Am Deliberate And Afraid of Nothing: Poetry, Prose, and Protest, a reading of Mizna authors on Thursday, March 26 at 7pm EST/4pm PST. Including Andrea Abi Karam, Romaissaa Benzizoune, and Sham-e-Ali Nayeem, this evening is a joyous first collaboration between Mizna and AAWW. This event will be facilitated by AAWW’s Guest Curator Bushra Rehman and Mizna’s Executive and Artistic Director Lana S. Barkawi. Mizna provides a critical platform for contemporary literature, art, film, and cultural programming centering the work of Arab/Southwest Asian and North African artists. For twenty years, Mizna has sought to reflect the depth and multiplicity of the SWANA community and has been committed to being a space for Arab, Muslim, and other artists from the region to reclaim our narratives and engage audiences in meaningful and artistically excellent art. This event is part of National Poetry Coalition programming and is supported by the Academy of American Poets with funds from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and is also supported by a National Endowment for the Arts grant to Mizna.

INSURGENT TONGUES with Tyrell Haberkorn, Sophia Terazawa, Nguyen Quoc Vinh, Gina Apostol, Vicente Rafael

Join us for a special night of readings and discussion to launch a new folio in the Transpacific Literary Project: Insurgent Tongues. In efforts to dismantle the languages of domination, contributors to the folio and guests will share their distinct approaches to probing the insurgent nature of language and languages of (counter)insurgency. Tyrell Haberkorn, Sophia Terazawa, Nguyen Quoc Vinh, and Gina Apostol will read from their individual works and join in a group discussion moderated by Vicente Rafael, author of Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language amid Wars of Translation.

THE COLLECTED SCHIZOPHRENIAS

THE COLLECTED SCHIZOPHRENIAS --- Join us for a special reading and conversation by novelist Esmé Weijun Wang, whose bestselling new essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias (Gray Wolf 2019) is a “riveting, honest, and courageously allows for complexities in the reality of what living with illness is like” (NPR). Don’t miss this nuanced discussion of mental health with Wang, a Whiting Award-winner named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. She’ll be in conversation with poet Larissa Pham.

THE YEAR OF BLUE WATER: BOOK LAUNCH with Yanyi, Wo Chan, Erica Hunt, and Monica Youn

THE YEAR OF BLUE WATER: BOOK LAUNCH with Yanyi, Wo Chan, Erica Hunt, and Monica Youn --- Join us for the launch of The Year of Blue Water, the debut poetry collection from Yanyi, the 2018 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets and an AAWW Margins Fellow. Intimate to the reader, elusive to the colonizer, the book creates a space of integration of variegated selves—an intellectual self, a queer self, a trans self, a Chinese self, an immigrant self, all of which share a kind of survival that is all his own. As Carl Phillips, who selected the book, writes: “As its title implies, The Year of Blue Water reads as a record of time, a kind of daybook of observations in sentences so crystalline, spare, direct, and yet offhand, that it can be easy to miss, at first, the book’s complexity.” Yanyi will be joined by poets Wo Chan (a fellow former AAWW Margins Fellow), Erica Hunt, and National Book Award Finalist Monica Youn, a member of the AAWW Board of Directors.

MEMORY VESSELS Sham-e-Ali Nayeem, Jenifer Sang Eun Park, Hai Dang-Phan, Lawrence Lacambra Ypil, and Kaitlin Rees

MEMORY VESSELS with Sham-e-Ali Nayeem, Jenifer Sang Eun Park, Hai Dang-Phan, Lawrence Lacambra Ypil, and Kaitlin Rees —— Have you ever held a beloved object--say, an old photograph or a faded letter--and found yourself transported back into a space of memory? Join us for a reading featuring four poets exploring the the vessels that carry us across the waters of memory. We’ll celebrate the two winners of Singapore Unbound’s Gaudy Boy Poetry Prize: Jenifer Sang Eun Park, whose Autobiography of Horse will change the way you think about horses, and Lawrence Lacambra Ypil, whose The Experiment of the Tropics, which explores the American occupation of the Philippines through text and image (Check out a piece of it in The Margins!). They’ll be joined by Hai Dang-Phan, whose Reenactments incorporates translation into the tender work of retracing his family's forced migration from Vietnam, and Muslim American poet Sham-e-Ali Nayeem, whose City of Pearls stirs in the landscapes of loss while sifting through memories of her father and mother. Introduced by AAWW Asia Editor Kaitlin Rees, editor of the Transpacific Literary Project. Co-sponsored by Singapore Unbound.

INSURRECTO! with Gina Apostol and Sabina Murray

INSURRECTO! with Gina Apostol and Sabina Murray ——— Join us for a reading with Gina Apostol to celebrate her latest work of fiction, Insurrecto, a tour de force about about the Philippines’ past and present told through rivaling scripts from an American filmmaker and her Filipino translator. The book was one of the New York Times’ Editor’s Choices for 2018 and won comparisons to Nabokov and Borges for its kaleidoscopic structure. With her trademark wit, uncommon humor, layering of forgotten histories and dueling narratives, Apostol tells the story of the atrocities that faced Filipinos who rose up against their colonizers during the Philippine-American war at the turn of the 20th century. As Laurel Fauntauzzo writes, “It does strike me that the narrative is cackling and weeping at the same time, which would seem to me a particularly Philippine way of existing.” Apostol will be joined by Filipina-Australian writer Sabina Murray, the author of Valiant Gentlemen.

HOW WE TALK ABOUT PRISON: REWRITING THE LANGUAGE OF INCARCERATION with Nicole R. Fleetwood, Madhu Kaza, Sarah Wang, Aviva Stahl & Daniel A. Gross

HOW WE TALK ABOUT PRISON: REWRITING THE LANGUAGE OF INCARCERATION with Nicole R. Fleetwood, Madhu Kaza, Sarah Wang, Aviva Stahl & Daniel A. Gross —- There are enough people in American prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers to populate a country. And like a country, American incarceration has its own language. There's the technocratic and euphemistic language of the state—offender, felon, illegal immigrant, detainee, parolee. There's also the language that the incarcerated use to describe their own position in a system of confinement—captive, prisoner, migrant, refugee, returning citizen. At the Asian American Writers' Workshop, we'll interrogate these terms and the political narratives they feed into. Is language adequate to describe the harsh reality of incarceration? Which words are used too often, too lazily, not often enough? Does language have the power to shape the way we think about freedom? Join us for presentations by Nicole R. Fleetwood, Madhu Kaza, Aviva Stahl, Sarah Wang, and a conversation with AAWW's Prisons Editor Daniel A. Gross about the evolving language of 2019 and the way it shapes lives.

HOW WE TALK ABOUT PRISON: REWRITING THE LANGUAGE OF INCARCERATION with Nicole R. Fleetwood, Madhu Kaza, Sarah Wang, Aviva Stahl & Daniel A. Gross

HOW WE TALK ABOUT PRISON: REWRITING THE LANGUAGE OF INCARCERATION with Nicole R. Fleetwood, Madhu Kaza, Sarah Wang, Aviva Stahl & Daniel A. Gross —- There are enough people in American prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers to populate a country. And like a country, American incarceration has its own language. There's the technocratic and euphemistic language of the state—offender, felon, illegal immigrant, detainee, parolee. There's also the language that the incarcerated use to describe their own position in a system of confinement—captive, prisoner, migrant, refugee, returning citizen. At the Asian American Writers' Workshop, we'll interrogate these terms and the political narratives they feed into. Is language adequate to describe the harsh reality of incarceration? Which words are used too often, too lazily, not often enough? Does language have the power to shape the way we think about freedom? Join us for presentations by Nicole R. Fleetwood, Madhu Kaza, Aviva Stahl, Sarah Wang, and a conversation with AAWW's Prisons Editor Daniel A. Gross about the evolving language of 2019 and the way it shapes lives.

See the rise and fall of the Transpacific Literary Project’s 13 pieces of Plastic all in one place

Comics & Friendship

Tonight! Join us for a presentation of graphic novels that will help you jump into a world without men, and the life of a washed up, vain, yet lovable shark wannabe actor named Bruce. Featuring Aminder Dhaliwal, Megan Nicole Dong, and Anne Ishii <3

AAWW LIT LUNCH: A CONVERSATION WITH GOLNAZ HASHEMZADEH BONDE

AAWW LIT LUNCH: A CONVERSATION WITH GOLNAZ HASHEMZADEH BONDE — Join us for a special lunchtime chat from AAWW’s green couch with Stockholm-based writer Golnaz Hashemzadeh Bonde, whose US debut, What We Owe, is a gripping novella about a 50 year-old Iranian refugee whose terminal cancer diagnosis compels her brutal and bitter telling of her journey to Sweden after fleeing—or betraying—the revolution. Translated from the Dutch by Elizabeth Clark Wessel, What We Owe is “spare and devastating” (Kirkus). Tune in to our page at 1:00pm to watch Golnaz read from the book and discuss it with writer and journalist Roja Heydarpour. Grab your lunch, and pull up to our live chat!

MEMOIR OF A KOREAN ADOPTEE: ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW with Nicole Chung and Greg Pak

MEMOIR OF A KOREAN ADOPTEE: ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW with Nicole Chung and Greg Pak --- What does it mean to lose your roots—within your culture, within your family—and what happens when you find them? Join us for an event with Nicole Chung as she discusses her debut memoir All You Can Ever Know, a poignant and graceful exploration of transracial adoption, family, and identity. In conversation with comic book writer and filmmaker Greg Pak.

2019 Margins Fellowship Promo !

Applications for the 2019 Margins Fellowship for emerging Asian American creative writers are OPEN NOW! Every year we support four emerging Asian American, Arab, or Muslim writers of color who write fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction and are aged 30 and under and based in New York City with $5,000, residency time at the Millay Colony for the Arts, mentorship, access to the AAWW writing space, and publication opportunities in our online magazine, The Margins. Send your application in by September 12.

LOLA: A READING ABOUT ASIAN GRANDMAS with Kate Gavino, Angela Chen, Vivian Lee, Matt Ortile & Rakesh Satyal

LOLA: A READING ABOUT ASIAN GRANDMAS with Kate Gavino, Angela Chen, Vivian Lee, Matt Ortile & Rakesh Satyal — Has your superstitious grandma ever told you myths that you haven’t been able to forget? Join us for this event about Asian grandmas with critically acclaimed cartoonist and Last Night’s Reading creator Kate Gavino, whose new graphic novel Sanpaku explores the Japanese myth through the eyes of Marcine, an impressionable Filipina preteen who lives for her grandmother’s eccentric stories. Kate will be joined by The Verge's Angela Chen, Little A editor Vivian Lee, GQ Senior Editor Kevin Nguyen, Catapult's Matt Ortile, and editor and author Rakesh Satyal, who will share pieces about their grandmothers.

2019 Margins Fellowship Cover Video

Applications for the 2019 Margins Fellowship for emerging Asian American creative writers are OPEN NOW! Every year we support four emerging Asian American, Arab, or Muslim writers of color who write fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction and are aged 30 and under and based in New York City with $5,000, residency time at the Millay Colony for the Arts, mentorship, access to the AAWW writing space, and publication opportunities in our online magazine, The Margins. Send your application in by September 12. https://aaww.org/apply-the-margins-fellowship-2019/

CHINESE SPECULATIVE FICTION with Su Wei, Austin Woerner & Jeremy Tiang

CHINESE SPECULATIVE FICTION with Su Wei, Austin Woerner & Jeremy Tiang —— Join us for a special event with acclaimed Chinese novelist Su Wei and his translator Austin Woerner, who will read and present The Invisible Valley, a work of speculative fiction about the Chinese Cultural Revolution and an epic experiment in creative co-translation that has been ten years in the making. A rollicking adventure story set in the jungles of far southern China during the 1970s, The Invisible Valley follows a young man whose friendship with a family of migrant woodcutters plunges him into a strange world of magic, mysticism, and giant snakes. Su and Woerner tell the story of their unlikely friendship, their unique approach to translation, the literary legacy of the “Down to the Countryside” movement, and Su’s dramatic life story. In Chinese and English. Moderated by writer and literary translator Jeremy Tiang.

Open City Fellowship Promo July 23 2018

Open City Fellowship Cover Promo

OUTSIDERS with YZ Chin, Jon Pineda & C. Dale Young

OUTSIDERS with YZ Chin, Jon Pineda & C. Dale Young ——— Join us and watch three spellbinding authors whose new works explore themes of invisibility and erasure through writing that dreams, drifts, and floats like smoke. YZ Chin’s Though I Get Home examines the fringe of Malaysian culture, politics, and postcolonial memory through intertwined tales of fate and perseverance; Kirkus Reviews calls it “a haunting, surprising, and rebellious collection that contains multitudes.” In Let’s No One Get Hurt, Jon Pineda weaves a lyrical coming-of-age story that reckons with racial and socioeconomic injustice, and, through protagonist Pearl, animates the lives of those pushed to the periphery in the American South. C. Dale Young is a prize-winning poet whose fiction debut, The Affliction, traces the lives of people who know what is to be disappeared, harkening to the desaparecidos of Latin American history.

FROM PLATE TO PAGE: WRITING ASIAN AMERICAN FOOD with Lillian Li, Ligaya Mishan, Naben Ruthnum, and Rohan Kamicheril

FROM PLATE TO PAGE: WRITING ASIAN AMERICAN FOOD with Lillian Li, Ligaya Mishan, Naben Ruthnum, and Rohan Kamicheril ——— Join us for an event that uses food as a starting point to explore the world of the restaurant, Asian American immigrant life, and how histories of migration and colonialism shape our plates. We’ll hear from Lillian Li, whose debut novel Number One Chinese Restaurant delves into the world of family drama behind the Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland; New York Times Hungry City columnist Ligaya Mishan, whose essential piece on the rise of Asian American food in the restaurant industry investigates its newfound critical embrace, and its effect on Asian American chefs; and Toronto-based Naben Ruthnum, whose funny and sharp memoir-essay Curry analyses the canon of “currybooks,” unraveling the nostalgic sentimentality around one of the most iconic staples of Asian food and its connection to the Indian diasporic experience. Moderated by chef and Tiffin editor Rohan Kamicheril.

MARIANNA'S BEAUTY SALON LAUNCH PARTY with Bushra Rehman, Quincy Scott Jones, Jai Dulani, Sadia Shepard

MARIANNA'S BEAUTY SALON LAUNCH PARTY with Bushra Rehman, Quincy Scott Jones, Jai Dulani, Sadia Shepard —— Join us to celebrate the launch of Marianna's Beauty Salon, Bushra Rehman's first collection of poetry. Rehman is author of Corona, a dark comedy on being South Asian American and co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, one of Ms. Magazine’s “100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time.” This collection spans twenty years of poetic work. Rehman will be joined on stage by Quincy Scott Jones (The T-Bone Series), Sadia Shepard (The Girl from Foreign) and Jai Dulani (The Revolution Starts at Home.)

Fan Club Giveaway!

We're raffling off a free copy of Go Home!, our anthology of Asian American literature, to members of our fan club. If you're not a member, you can join for a small monthly donation. You'll get cool stuff! And you'll be helping us build a space for Asian American stories. Join at http://aaww.org/fanclub/

ROBOT CODA with Margaret Rhee, Ching-In Chen, Seo-Young Chu, Mimi Mondal & Vyshali Manivannan

ROBOT CODA with Margaret Rhee, Ching-In Chen, Seo-Young Chu, Mimi Mondal & Vyshali Manivannan —— Join us for a reading with four writers who explore the relationship between race and technology. Margaret Rhee reads from LOVE, ROBOT, a collection of love poetry examining the bonds between humans and robots. Poet and community organizer Ching-In Chen reads from recombinant, an assemblage of poetry and data that investigates female and genderqueer lineages, Hugo Award-nominee Mimi Mondal reads from her upcoming novelette and discusses gender expression in South Asian science fiction/fantasy, and Seo-Young Chu reads from her theoretical work on science fiction and how it offers high-intensity realism. Don’t miss this event that uses a variety of forms to explore humans’ relationship with robots, technology, and ourselves. Moderated by Vyshali Manivannan.

CITIES AND SELVES with Alexander Chee, Aminatta Forna & Anelise Chen

How do you write an autobiographical novel — and is it really that different from writing a city? Wander the streets of London and New York with Alexander Chee and Aminatta Forna for a special event spanning the personal essay, fiction, and the writing life. We'll hear from Alex Chee's highly-anticipated nonfiction collection that offers readers a map of secrets and second chances, and novelist Aminatta Forna, whose latest book Happiness unravels the city of London and the unlikely people it draws together. Join us for a conversation about how writing changes us with moderator Anelise Chen.

AND/WITH: Abdellah Taïa & Meena Alexander at Brooklyn Public LIbrary

AND/WITH: Abdellah Taïa & Meena Alexander at the Brooklyn Public Library ——— Belladonna* Collaborative, Brooklyn Public Library and Asian American Writer's Workshop are proud to co-present Abdellah Taïa in conversation with poet and scholar Meena Alexander. Additional sponsorship has been generously provided by Seven Stories Press.

THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL: WRITING ABOUT MUSLIM WOMEN

THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL: WRITING ABOUT MUSLIM WOMEN with Humera Afridi, Roja Heydarpour, Raad Rahman, Sarah Khan, Sumaya Awad & Noel Pangilinan ——— Join us for a special reading with the Open City fellows. Open City documents the pulse of metropolitan Asian America as it's being lived on the streets of New York right now. Join us for a reading with our Muslim Communities fellows Humera Afridi, Roja Heydarpour, Raad Rahman, Sarah Khan and Sumaya Awad who’ve written narrative nonfiction on the Muslim American communities of New York City over the past six months. We'll view Sarah's short film on the mother of Matin Siraj, an entrapped Muslim American, and the fellows will share their experiences and talk about their Open City stories that document the hopes and fears of Muslim Americans. In conversation with Open City editor, Noel Pangilinan.