Past Events

Moustafa Bayoumi's first book, How Does It Feel to Be A Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America (Penguin Press 2008), became an instant classic: a primer to help understand life after September 11th. The book offered an intimate portrait of Arab youth in Brooklyn, who experienced Islamophobic racism and...

A CUNY "Mapping Asian American New York" faculty seminar, this roundtable will discuss the links between writing and migration. Organized by CUNY Associate Professor of Philosophy Kyoo Lee, this event will feature Asian American writers and intellectuals discussing the spatiotemporal “sparks” of imagination that push forward narrative and document cross-cultural...

The poems of David Mura, Monica Sok, and Aimee Suzara delve into the darker reaches of history: the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the mass killing of Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge, and the exhibition of Filipinos at the 1904 World’s Fair. We begin our second installment...

For more than twenty years, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop has incubated emerging writers of color, including such writers as Cathy Park Hong, Tina Chang, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Last year, we created an utterly new fellowship that grants publication opportunities, cash, work space, and a residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts: The Margins Fellowship.

One of Indonesia’s most prominent novelists, Eka Kurniawan has been likened to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison and named the successor to Indonesia national novelist Pramaoedya Ananta Toer by none other than Benedict Anderson. Join us to celebrate the English language debut—and a rare stateside appearance—of a great world...

The woman protagonists of Patricia Park and Alexandra Kleeman’s debut novels are contemporary, cosmopolitan, and unlike any heroines you’ve met before. Take Korean American orphan Jane Re, the bodega worker-turned-Brooklynite nanny of her novel Re Jane. The book features a parentless child and a scandalous love affair, but Patricia reboots...

  One afternoon session, 2:00pm – 5:00pm Saturday, September 12 Fee: $20 Class limit 15 people What makes a character? Is it their favorite snack, their bushy eyebrows, their relationship with their mom, their all black wardrobe? Come spend Saturday, September 12 building a character from the ground up. We’ll...

Location: Verso Books, 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201. Doors open at 6:30 PM. It’s 1839 and China and Great Britain stand on the brink of the First Opium War. By the time it’s over, the Western powers will have torched the Emperor’s summer palace, legalized the Opium trade...

For the final event in the Post-Midnight series, guest curator the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) is throwing a rather unusual holiday: Anti-Nationalism Day. An invented holiday meant to humorously rebut India's Independence Day on August 15th, Anti-Nationalism Day will feature poets and writers reading newly written pieces in response...

Join us for an evening featuring Tanwi Nandini Islam and Naomi Jackson, whose debut novels share a setting in Brooklyn, home to so many families who call somewhere else home. Born to immigrant parents, Islam's and Jackson’s heroines wrestle with competing cultural messages, gender norms, and a poignant sense of placelessness,...

Calling all poets and politicos! You are hereby requested to drop by our first installation of our Poetry & Politics series featuring Wing Tek Lum and Vikas Menon and MCed by Sarah Gambito. In 1937, the Japanese army invaded the then capital of China--the city of Nanjing--and over the next...

Join us for an evening of conversation and laughter as the quirky yet controversial duo of the #GoodMuslimBadMuslim podcast record a live show for their next episode from the heart of the Big Apple. Stay tuned as co-hosts Zahra Noorbakhsh and Taz Ahmed declare fatwas, creep sharia and hand out Good...

Calling all poets, writers, musicians, and comedians who want to share their work with the community! After a brief hiatus, we are back with our Mouth-to-Mouth open mic series, a safe space for forging new art and communities. We’ve seen emerging writers and established authors, sparked book deals, and provided...

One afternoon session, 2:00pm – 5:00pm Saturday, July 11 Fee: $20 Class limit 15 people Whether you feel superhuman or just super human, come draw your story at this workshop. We’ll explore the history of Asian American comic and graphic novel artists, then jump into the creative process ourselves. From...

Join us for a special event celebrating a new anthology of Filipino myths: Kuwento: Lost Things. We’ll hear from three contributors from the anthology: Anna Alves, PhD student in American Studies at Rutgers University, Newark; Sarah Gambito, cofounder of Kundiman; and Melissa R. Sipin, co-editor of Kuwento). Moderated by acclaimed...

The Nepal earthquake in April was one of the deadliest natural disasters to strike the country. It laid waste to whole villages, took the life of more than 8,000 people, and injured almost 20,000. In May, a second earthquake struck, setting back relief work and demoralizing Nepalis right when the...

Four evening sessions, 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. : Wednesday, May 27 Thursday, May 28 Tuesday, June 2 Wednesday, June 3 Fees & Payment Options: Full: $180 (discount beginning 5-26) Full payment due before first class Deposit: $85 Deposit due by first class. Remainder due by Tuesday, June 2 Outsiders, rebels, and...

Taiwan and Hawaii sit on the opposite sides of the Pacific, but these two islands serve as hubs of migration from the rest of Asia and to the United States--as you and your family may know from personal experience! Treat yourselves to a reading on Saturday, May 23 featuring two...

***This class is now full*** Seven Fridays from May 22 to July 3, 2015, 6:30 - 9:00 p.m. Fees & Payment Options: Full: $350 General / $300 Members Full payment due before first class. Deposit: $100 General / $85 Members Deposit due before first class. Remainder due by Friday, June...

Join us as writers Alex Gilvarry and Viet Nguyen read novels that laugh in the darkness of American empire, whether it’s the Vietnam War or the War on Terror.

So if China’s going to be the capital of the 21st Century, what does it mean to leave this new metropole or come back? Photographer Alan Chin and writers Suzanne Ma and Val Wang, moderated by Wah-Ming Chang, touch upon what it means to immigrate from China and what it means...

We are joining teams with Dissent Magazine to celebrate the launch of the magazine's Spring issue, “Border Crossings,” featuring a discussion with Vivek Bald, Gaiutra Bahadur, Jack Tchen, and Minh-Ha T. Pham, moderated by Michelle Chen. The panel will start at 7:30 p.m. sharp. To read Dissent’s Spring issue for...

Join us as we travel from the protected forest lands of South India to the inner life of a wandering Desi urbanite in London. Tania James’s lyrical new novel The Tusk That Did the Damage portrays the tense and complicated politics at Kavanar Wildlife Park, where bull elephants trample visitors, find themselves studied...

The AAWW at the 2015 AWP Conference and Bookfair! In the last few years, we've seen a rise in global conflicts (the protests in Cairo during Arab Spring and self-immolation of Tibetan monks in China). Diasporic writers, such as Asian and Arab American writers, have had a profound and conflicted...

We join forces with feminist poetry collective Belladonna for a night of surrealist and experimental writing by Betsy Fagin, Cathy Park Hong, Michael Leong, and Dorothy Tse, who is visiting from Hong Kong. Founded at Bluestockings in 1999, Belladonna has showcased over 200 writers internationally, who all share an intense desire to be...

Did you know that many writing contests require you to be a US citizen? While this requirement may initially seem benign, these contests end up excluding millions of writers of color from applying every year. More than ten million migrants a year are explicitly barred from submitting to both artists...

When journalist Ian Jack first visited India in 1976, he found steam locomotives, a sluggish economy, and a national literature that had been largely written by outsiders--say, J.G. Farrell, E.M. Forster, or Larry Collins. In the last few decades, Indian writing has boomed: consider the rise of Arundhati Roy, Salman...

Celebrate Valentine’s Day by hearing two debut novelists—Mira Jacob and Sandip Roy—read about time-hopping stories about love, grief, and the complications of the South Asian immigrant family. Mira Jacob’s The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing begins when Amina--30-ish and single—flies home to New Mexico to visit her South Indian parents: her...

Sure, the end of the world is nigh, but then what? Two award-winning writers—Marie Mutsuki Mockett and Emily St. John Mandel—read books about the hopeful depths and consolations offered by art and spirituality after the apocalypse. In Emily St. John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven, a viral pathogen has killed 99%...

Hailed as "one of the most fascinating female poets of our time" (BOMB), Kimiko Hahn reads from her new poetry collection with emerging poets Nicole Sealey and Charif Shanahan. At the intersection of neuroscience and classical Japanese aesthetics, Kimiko’s new book Brain Fever meditates on the nature of the human...