Past Events

Three Sessions, 3 hours each (6-9pm) Fridays, August 11th, August 18th, August 25th Fees & Payment Options: $150 General / $100 AAWW Members (JOIN THE FAN CLUB!) Full payment due before first class. STUDENT RATE AVAILABLE FOR LIMITED SEATS Why you should take this class: You’ve got something special in...

If you’re in the mood for an addictive and charming summer read, come hear authors Diksha Basu and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan read new novels about social climbing, love, and the drive to strike it rich. Basu’s The Windfall portrays the rise of the Delhi rich from the perspective of a...

Four Sessions, 2 hours each (7-9pm) Wednesdays August 9th, August 16th, August 23rd, August 30th Fees & Payment Options: $200 General / $180 AAWW Members (JOIN THE FAN CLUB!) Full payment due before first class. Maximum of fifteen students. Why you should take this class: Poet Sally Wen Mao, award-winning...

Four Sessions, 3 hours each (6-9pm) Tuesdays, August 8, August 15, August 22, and August 29 Fees & Payment Options: $220 General / $200 AAWW Members (JOIN THE FAN CLUB!) Full payment due before first class. Maximum of ten students. Why you should take this class: Writer & Director Darine...

Come hear poet Hossannah Asuncion and nonfiction writer Laurel Fantauzzo write about the ghosts of love—the emotional distance it can create when the desired intimacy fails, and the ways love haunts the people who witnessed it, even when it's passed. With her debut poetry collection, Hossannah Asuncion’s Object Permanence uncovers...

Nearly 90% of the books reviewed by the New York Times are written by white writers. In a scintillating performance debut, the AAWW Margins Fellows will play with language to drag the literary institution and each other. They may come in drag. Dragons will be provided on request. RSVP HERE...

Join us for the sixth session of Poetry Poetry and hear readings by four thrilling poets: Esther Lin, Michelle Lin, Dawn Lundy Martin, and Tommy Pico. These poets are pushing the edges of poetic theory, form, and politics, interrogating the legacies of Asian American immigration, queer identity, settler colonialism, and...

Come hear the authors of two of this year’s most anticipated short story collections. The quotidian stories in Akhil Sharma’s new book simmer with a barely hidden, devastatingly emotional undercurrent?and have earned him comparisons to Chekov. Reminiscent of Calvino and Borges, Kanishk Tharoor’s lush and inventive collection ranges from science...

Do you ever feel like your life is in a constant state of crisis? Do you feel like, nevertheless, you persist? Come see three thrilling experimental novelists whose new books are about pushing forward against life-killing forces, whether it’s capitalism, the political status quo, or more existential threats like grief...

Day 2 of WE ARE THE PEOPLE WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR: A Festival of Visionary Ideas, Activism & Arts Given the pivotal role that cultural narratives play in deciding public policy and the fates of countless communities; the reversal of political momentum on immigrant, mass incarceration, criminal justice reform, and...

Come on out for a kanikapila vegetarian potluck -- an evening of music and poetry to fundraise for the recording of Ishle Yi Park's Bless Our Waters, her first musical CD in Hawaii with Na Hoku Award-winning Asian Pacific Islander musician & producer Kenneth Makuakane. Featuring Taiyo Na and other...

Celebrate the new edition of works by Nick Joaquin, one of the most important writers of the Philippines who is only now being published in the United States for the first time by Penguin Classics. Born in 1917, Joaquin wrote a surreal, anguished sentence that cast an ironic eye at...

Rahul Mehta and SJ Sindu read from debut novels featuring complex queer desi characters struggling to reconcile their gender and sexuality with the families they came from. Introduced by AAWW Board Member Manan Ahmed of Chapati Mystery and Columbia University. Moderated by Sreshtha Sen, former director of the Sarah Lawrence...

Spend the second to last Friday of Pride Month with Kay Ulanday Barrett, Jennif(f)er Tamayo, Angela Peñaredondo, & Alan Pelaez! Join us as we honor queer and trans voices, emphasize the importance of this month, and celebrate Kay’s first poetry collection When The Chant Comes (Topside Heliotrope)! Featured in The...

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.