Since 1998, the Workshop has presented the Annual Asian American Literary Awards to some of the preeminent writers in the country, such as Amitav Ghosh, Ha Jin, Chang Rae-Lee, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, and Meera Nair.

This year, The Workshop presents a Lifetime Achievement Award to Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the play M. Butterfly. WeˇŻll reunite Mr. Hwang with Law & Order actor B.D. Wong in a special reading and conversation with Oskar Eustis, the Artistic Director of The Public Theater. All guest will receive a free paperback of M. Butterfly, published by Plume.

The Workshop will also honor winners of the Literary Awards in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, as well as the surprise winner of our Members' Choice Award.

The Eleventh Annual Asian American Literary Awards Ceremony
Monday, December 8, 2008

Fiction Award

Mohsin Hamid for The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Harcourt)

Nonfiction Award presented by Swarthmore professor Bakirathi Mani

Vijay Prashad forThe Darker Nations (New Press)

Poetry Award presented by Timothy Liu

Sun Yung Shin for Skirt Full of Black (Coffee House Press)

VIP Reception | 6-7:30 pm
Deutsches Haus at NYU
2 Washington Mews, New York
$100

Awards Ceremony | 7:30-9 pm
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Film Center at NYU
36 East 8th Street, New York
$20 members, $30 non-members

The Eleventh Annual Asian American Literary Awards is sponsored by The NYU Creative Writing Program, HSBC, Edelman, Verizon, Loeb & Loeb, Paradigm Talent Agency, Singha Beer, and The Chinatown Ice Cream Factory.

Winners and Finalists
Fiction
Mohsin Hamid,
The Reluctant Fundamentalist Winner
Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero
Yuko Taniguchi, The Ocean in the Closet Nonfiction
Atul Gawande, Better
Bich Minh Nguyen, Stealing Buddha's Dinner
Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations Winner Poetry
Sarith Peou, Corpse Watching
Sun Yung Shin, Skirt Full of Black Winner
Rita Wong, Forage

Reviews

This year, the Workshop celebrates the twentieth anniversary of Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly. Performed in 1998 at the Eugene O'Neill Theater, M. Butterfly retells the true story of a French diplomat who failed to recognize that his twenty year old affair with an alluring Chinese actress had actually been with a male Chinese spy. Hwang fused this journalistic account with Puccini's Madama Butterfly to create an intricate, mazelike classic of Asian American theater--not just a witty potboiler about sex and espionage (which it is!), but an operatic subversion of East-West relations and Asian American gender stereotypes. Rather than being a compliant geisha, the diva in M. Butterfly (played in the original production by B.D. Wong) is manipulative, callow, and powerful. As The New York Times wrote in its initial review, "Instead of reducing the world to an easily digested cluster of sexual or familial relationships, Mr. Hwang cracks open a liaison to reveal a sweeping, universal meditation on two of the most heated conflicts--men versus women, East versus West--of this or any time."

M. Butterfly @ 20 By Alvin Eng
In Honor of M. Butterfly