Past Events

Join us for two Korean American novelists whose new novels interrogate 1970s and 1980s Korean politics: Jimin Han and Yoojin Grace Wuertz, both born in Seoul. Both books follow university students, whether in the US and in Seoul, as they fall in love, build friendships, and understand how they relate...

Two Sessions, 2 hours each (7-9pm) Mondays June 19th & June 26th Fees & Payment Options: $100 General / $80 AAWW Members (Become a Member!) Full payment due before first class. Maximum of fifteen students. *STUDENT RATE for limited seats, contact Tracy Wong at twong@aaww.org for availability!* In the introduction...

Three Sessions, 3 hours each (6-9pm) Wednesdays June 14th, June 21st, June 28th Fees & Payment Options: $250 General / $220 AAWW Members (Become a Member!) Full payment due before first class. Maximum of fifteen students. *EARLY BIRD! Sign up before June 1st for $200 General / $180 AAWW Members*...

Join the New York Public Library for the next Periodically Speaking, featuring four outstanding writers, editors, and teachers in conversation about literature, immigration, and the literary life. The world is changing for immigrants in the arts in 2017. How are stories of immigration impacting literature? Who is telling these stories...

Don Lee reads from his new novel about the heartbreak and failures of a Korean American singer-songwriter, whose life takes a turn when he encounters an old flame, Lonesome Lies Before Us (W.W.. Norton 2017). Marlon James calls it a “wonderfully lyrical novel,” whose loving portraits of “beautiful losers” serves...

*This event does not take place at AAWW. On the publication anniversary of George Orwell’s 1984, come listen to performances by Swati Khurana, Abeer Hoque, Sheba Karim, Tanwi Nandini Islam, Sofija Stefanovic, Youmna Chlala and OHYUNG about truth, love, and other tortures. June 8 is also World Oceans Day and...

Come see two artists interrogating the visual narratives of the Vietnam war and refugee experience: MacArthur “Genius” An-My Lê and graphic novelist Thi Bui. Lê’s images depict re-enactments of the Vietnam War and play-scenarios of US Marines fighting a Middle Eastern war in California, creating a liminal space between documentary...

Mic Check! Are you a writer? Come share your work at our next edition of our open mic, Mouth to Mouth. Hosted by AAWW Fam poets Sonia Guiñansaca and Kay Ulanday Barrett, this edition of Mouth to Mouth features YaliniDream and Aldrin Valdez. Mouth to Mouth seeks to provide a...

Are you in touch with your inner Asian American rebel or underachiever? Is Jordan Peele’s Get Out your new favorite movie? Come hear Lisa Ko read from her debut novel, The Leavers, the winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded by Barbara Kingsolver for a novel that addresses...

Come by the Museum of the Moving Image (@MovingImageNYC) to catch a screening of Open City Muslim Communities Fellow Sarah K. Khan’s powerful short documentary film Surviving Surveillance, Catering to America: Shahina Parveen (2017, 10 min) in its world premiere. The film looks at the ripples of the domestic War...

Come celebrate the launch of Sheba Karim’s Young Adult novel That Thing We Call a Heart (Harper Collins 2017), the funny and affecting story of Shabnam Qureshi’s quest for love and identity. We’ll also host a frank conversation about Asian-American representation in young adult fiction, featuring Sona Charaipotra (We Need...

Come hear two crucial novelists who’re narrating the colonial and postcolonial nation. Chomp on free Burmese food from our catering partner, Burma Noodle Bar. We’re celebrating the new novel by author-actress Charmaine Craig: the semi-autobiographical epic, Miss Burma. Pulitzer Finalist Laila Lalami calls the book “a sweeping novel of Burma...

Get ready to power down: we’re going off the record! Come listen to-but don’t record—an eclectic mix of writers, journalists, chefs, and makeup artists; Mariya Karimjee, Alanna Okun, Jenn de la Vega, Anna Theresa Day, and Delina Medhin get intimate about a timely May theme, Mothers. Moderated by BuzzFeed News...

Join us for a special evening featuring three Arab American writers exploring the boundaries between personal and political: novelist/poet Hala Alyan and poets Hayan Charara and Marwa Helal. From the Six-Day War and the invasion of Iraq to explosive poetic experimentations, these writers explore what it means to have a...

The second event of a new series featuring translators who are first or second generation immigrants or who identify as part of a diaspora, this installment features: Amy Sara Carroll, one of the collaborators in the Transborder Immigrant Tool; Eiko Otake, whose work as a movement artist and translator has...

We’re delighted to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Woman Warrior by legendary Asian American novelist and poet Maxine Hong Kingston, one of the most influential and formally adventurous forerunners in Asian American literature.

Transcendent American poet Max Ritvo wrote that if the world outside a poet’s head is more interesting than the world inside their head, they might as well become a journalist. His point: it’s what’s inside the poet’s mind, what (or who) is hooting or singing or moaning or gagging inside...

In the next installment of our Asian American Feminism series, NAPAWF*NYC will be hosting a workshop on Asian American history through a feminist lens. The Chinese Exclusion Act, World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, and the Southeast Asian refugee crisis have been raised in national conversations on the persecution...

Mic Check! Are you a writer? Come share your work at our next edition of our open mic, Mouth to Mouth. Hosted by AAWW Fam poets Sonia Guiñansaca and Kay Ulanday Barrett, this edition of Mouth to Mouth features Kit Yan and Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo. Mouth to Mouth seeks to provide...

Do you feel like you’re living in a surreal dystopia? Well, we’ve got your guidebook. Come hear critically acclaimed authors Deepak Unnikrishnan and Alexandra Kleeman read from new story collections. Their strange inventions will make perfect sense to anyone who feels like they don’t belong in our fantasia of global...

Fam, things are about to get real hard. Harder than they have ever been and we need to hold fast and be smart about how we organize over the next four years. To protect ourselves we need to talk about digital security and how to practice digital self-defense during a...

Come through for a rare New York appearance by two out-of-town authors reading works about family turmoil, revolution, and the legacy of Ferdinand Marcos’s rule in the Philippines--a vital reference point to anyone thinking today about authoritarian rule and resistance. Seven members of Susan Quimpo’s family joined the anti-Marcos resistance....

Note: This program is co-sponsored by the AAWW, the reading is taking place at the Tenement Museum. Award-winning author Min Jin Lee comes to the museum with her new book. Pachinko (Grand Central Publishing 2017) follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea, and moving to...

Join us for a night featuring writers of fragmented, hybridic family narratives that explore themes of immigration, grief, and the father: Q.M. Zhang and lê th? di?m thúy, who’ll talk with The New Yorker’s Hua Hsu. A hybrid memoir/novel that’s part espionage, part historical documentary, Q.M. Zhang’s Accomplice to Memory...

As the country faces a xenophobic resurgence, we present novelists, filmmakers, and activists who’re narrating how our immigration system threatens families, mothers, and children. Shanthi Sekaran’s new novel Lucky Boy follows an undocumented eighteen-year-old Chicano mother who winds up in immigration detention--causing her son to be adopted by an upper...

Is your family history a little complicated? Novelists Sonya Chung and Rowan Hisayo Buchanan and poet Annie Kim read new work about family trauma crossing generations, countries, and racial identity. In these authors’ works, often multigenerational and multiracial, the personal history of the immigrant family intersects with the broader sweep...

Let’s get conversational (to the tune of Olivia Newton John). Jordan Alam, sára abdullah and Aisha Bint Gladys will be sharing stories of migration and Muslim life in the US. From the mundane to the magical, these artists are sharing new work and speaking about life under the current administration--...

CALLING ALL ARTISTS! A desire to deconstruct and resist is a plus. Amidst the chaos come on home and take the time to ground yourself in poetry and music-- for and by our people. This is a night to rejoice, to celebrate radical imagination, and to heal. We’re joining together...

“Poetry can save us,” Martín Espada once wrote. Join us for the fifth edition of Poetry Poetry, featuring Guggenheim Fellow Kimiko Hahn, National Book Award Finalist Monica Youn, Pushcart Prize Winner Sally Wen Mao, and our very own Poetry Editor Emily Yoon! RESERVE A SEAT! $5 SUGGESTED DONATION | OPEN...

Fam, things are about to get real hard. Harder than they have ever been and we need to hold fast and be smart about how we organize over the next four years. To protect ourselves we need to talk about digital security and how to practice digital self-defense during a...