Past Events

The writers of Bamboo Ridge Press draw on Native Hawaiian, Japanese, and Standard English to craft a hybrid poetry that reflects the history and culture of their islands. Join us for a rare chance to hear six of these poets read in New York. Four will read from their collective...

they want me to settle down when I have not yet lived – Frances Chung The struggle was everywhere during the 1970s Asian American Movement. In between rallies, volunteer health services, and radical study groups, many activists sat down to write poetry. On the final night of the exhibition Serve...

The new front in the War on Terror is the “homegrown enemy.” Undercover officers and informants have spied on 30 mosques in New York alone, and counter-terrorism agents have a file on every Moroccan taxi driver in the city. Based on several years of research and reportage from Texas and New York to Yorkshire, The Muslims are Coming! by...

The Annual Asian American Literary Awards honor Asian American writers for excellence in three categories: (1) fiction,(2) poetry, and (3) nonfiction. Literary awards recipients are determined by a national panel of judges who are selected on the basis of expertise in a literary genre and/or experience in academic environments relevant...

Are you a freelance/self-employed writer, journalist, photographer, artist, or producer without health insurance? Do you have questions about how the NY Health Insurance Exchange works and how to sign up before the March 31st deadline? Come to a free informational session hosted by the Asian American Writers' Workshop, South Asian...

Chang-rae Lee's new novel On Such A Full Sea is what you might call a post-post-apocalyptic novel. The world has already ended, the environment already ravaged beyond belief. And that’s when things get interesting. The novel follows Fan, a diminutive fishtank diver and descendant from the settlers from New China,...

Blood is thicker than water, but this has never stopped intra-family drama. Join us for an evening of conversation with Catherine Chung (Forgotten Country), Mai Der Vang (How do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology), and Dina Nayeri (A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea) about history, separations and schisms,...

We suspect that you, like us, have a rich inner life, and never get tired of traipsing its landscape. Join us on the 30th if you carry a portrait of Emily Dickinson in your heart, and have a soft spot for introverts and writers who are obsessed with the power...

This event is sold out! To hear about future programs first, sign up for our mailing list. How do you make sense of something that's always shifting? Identity and self-definition are perpetually in flux -- writer/reader, past/future, fiction/reality, linear/cyclical, maker/made are treated as dichotomies, but these writers illustrate that each is...

Days are short; nights are long and cold. We're entering prime cozying-up season. (In other words: there's a good reason so many babies are born in September.) Please join us for an evening of readings and talk about what really drives humankind and its literary documentarians: love, sex, and all...

An evening of film, art, literature, and music, Second Settlements features artists whose work arises out of a necessity to resettle spaces, both real and imagined. Second Settlements is an exploration of places and experiences long lived out by the artists, that still weigh heavily in their creative work. In the work of each of...

Please join us for a community gathering, literary reading, and book sale in the spirit of Bayanihan, in support of typhoon survivors. Featuring readings and discussion with Jessica Hagedorn, Ninotchka Rosca, Sheila Coronel, Sarah Gambito, Joseph Legaspi, R.A. Villanueva, Gina Apostol and others. Hosted by Bino A. Realuyo and Nita Noveno. Books...

It's Decorative Gourd Season around here, as McSweeney’s famously declared — a time to look back at all the hard work that’s gone into producing the fruits we now collect and devour in gluttonous revelry. To mark the season, we’re inviting poets, writers, and readers alike to join us in...

Join us as SAWCC celebrates the publication of Gaiutra Bahadur‘s book Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (U of Chicago Press 2013) in a multimedia evening of text, image, and song. Guyanese are the second largest immigrant group in Queens and among the five largest in New York City, and their story of coming...

A FREE youth theater weekend workshop! Friday, November 15, 5 - 7 pm Saturday, November 16, 10 am - 2 pm Sunday, November 17, 10 am - 2 pm Budding dramatists ages 15-18 are invited to apply for this F-R-E-E weekend theater intensive. Race, Page & Stage is a workshop...

This workshop is full! Sign up for our mailing list to be notified of future workshops. Six Mondays, November 11 –December 16, 2013, 7 pm - 9 pm Writing from life can be a tricky business. There are people to protect, faulty memories of events, and the pitfalls of self-censorship and self-aggrandizement....

Being young can be difficult terrain. Awkward human growing pains sometimes coincide with migration and racial difference and family drama. Fortunately, travelers and writers have left maps (in the form of Young Adult literature) at the formative threshold between childhood and grown-upness to help along the path. This becomes even...

Join us for an evening of readings and conversation about the biological and chemical sciences as muse for fiction and poetry as you sip a Fountain of Youth Cocktail**. Hanya Yanagihara's novel The People in the Trees explores, among themes of colonization and moral relativism in the social sciences, immortality,...

You're invited to join as Brooklyn Public Library and Guernica present the first of a series of three discussions on race in publishing. In June, Guernica published a themed issue exploring Race in America, with an investment in helping to create meaningful conversation, broaden our community, and develop actionable steps...

Half indoor block party, half book bash, PAGE TURNER: The AAWW Food and Books Festival is an unforgettable all-day free public fair that’ll bring together more than 40 writers and performers and the best of Brooklyn culinary culture. Drop by Roulette and the YWCA in Downtown Brooklyn on Saturday, October...

Ten years after Edward Said’s passing, the financial and ideological crisis in higher education has caused the academy to increasingly retreat into itself. Ten years after Edward Said, it is difficult to find an academic who moves so seamlessly between world, text, and critique; who resists trenchant disciplinary specialization while...

Pasta lovers of the world unite: We're celebrating our love for food and travel writing with Jen Lin-Liu’s On The Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome with Love and Pasta. Jen will cook for us! And read and talk about how she hopped on the Silk Road in an attempt to find...

Annapurna Potluri, author of The Grammarian, Amana Fontanella-Khan, author of Pink Sari Revolution, and artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh join us for readings and conversation about women's lives and political power in a fictional India of this time last century and a contemporary world that is grappling with its response to sexual...

CultureStrike, Guernica Magazine, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop's The Margins invite you to our Brooklyn Book Festival BookEnd party. Folks who think political dissidents are cute and overworked editors are sexy should join us to celebrate online publishing, art, politics, and the end of summer. Come to talk to...

Helen Wan brings her inside experience at corporate law firms to bear in her new novel The Partner Track, the story of an ambitious young Chinese-American woman who's being groomed to become the first minority female partner at one of the country's most prestigious law firms, until an incident at...

We’re singing our praises to Queens! Join Bushra Rehman and friends/writers/artists Jaishri Abichandani, Nadia Q. Ahmad, Jennifer Chowdhury, Dulani, Soniya Munshi, and Sa'dia Rehman for a multi-media, salon-style reading and celebration of Rehman's new novel Corona,which was recently featured in Poets & Writers Best Debut Fiction issue. Accompanied by iconic images of Queens, these readers pay tribute to Rehman's lyrical coming-of-age narrative as well as the borough they call home.

Come celebrate with Kollaboration New York as we kick off their official launch party and the premiere of their 2013 music video! With less than two months until one of the most highly-anticipated annual talent competitions of the year, this season’s show includes 10 finalists who have been going through...

Come on by as we listen to globally-inspired composer/vocalist Imani Uzuri (whose "gorgeously chesty ruminations" [New York Times] "sound equally at home on an opera stage or a disco 12-inch" [Village Voice]) perform a blues set and Bill Cheng read to us from his bluesy new novel "Southern Cross the Dog." Characterized by...

We're roaring back with a vengeance! Print out your best prose and bring it to the first AAWW Open Mic of 2013, with hosts Ed Lin and Jen Kwok. We will be joined by A.X. Ahmad and Open Mic favorite John-Flor Sisante. A.X. Ahmad's debut novel The Caretaker follows ex-Indian...

We're presenting Salman Rushdie with our lifetime achievement award