Fellowships

AAWW is proud to offer two fellowships for emerging NYC and tristate area-based Asian American and Asian diasporic writers. The Open City Fellowship gives writers the opportunity to write narrative nonfiction on vibrant immigrant communities across the tristate area. The Margins Fellowship is an opportunity for four New York-based emerging creative writers to establish a home for their writing as they make progress on a book-length work. Applications for the 2024 Fellowship cycle are open until September 29, 2023. Head to each page for more info!

Open City Fellowship

Open City documents the pulse of real-time Asian America. We’re looking for writers to create deft, engaging narratives that bring the face, name, place, and heart of the community to issues like gentrification, labor, and community policing.

2019 Open City Fellow Cohort: Astha Rajvanshi, Syma Mohammed, Maryam Mir, Nora Salem, Hannah Bae, and Mohamad Saleh, with Humera Afridi and Noel Pangilinan

Open City Fellows receive a $2,500 grant, skill-building workshops, and publishing opportunities in The Margins as part of two nine-month fellowship opportunities: the Open City Neighborhoods Fellowship and the Open City Muslim Communities Fellowship. 


The Margins Fellowship

The Margins is our award-winning online magazine of arts and ideas. We seek to bridge literary thought, social justice, pop culture, and critical theory while engaging with immigration, race, and transnationalism. 

2021 Margins Fellow Cohort: Sahar Romani, Ghinwa Jawhari, Anne Branigin, Madeleine Mori

The Margins Fellowship grants a $5,000 fellowship, mentorship, work space, career guidance, and publishing opportunities to four Asian diasporic creative writers based in NYC for a full year. Fellows are also awarded residency time at Millay Arts—an innovative seven-acre artists retreat space at the former house and gardens of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay in Austerlitz, NY.


The Van Lier Fellowship was AAWW’s first fellowship program and was awarded from 1993 to 2005. Given to emerging creative writers of color aged thirty and under, the Van Lier Fellowship supported many Asian American writers at the beginning of their careers, including Cathy Park Hong, Monique Truong, Ava Chin and Tina Chang.