Past Events

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

In partnership with TC's Kappa Delta Pi and the Asian American Writers' Workshop we will host a read-aloud of provocative writings on Immigrants and Class. The creative work of fellows of the Asian American Writers Workshop calls to our attention different circumstances, thoughts, and experiences of Asian immigrants and how it relates to class in...

A book event with theater, film, and community forum presented by afro-latin@ forum, Asian American Writer's Workshop, and the Schombug Center for Research in Black Culture.

Pay tribute to H.T. Tsiang's experimental, proletarian novel on Depression-era New York.

Join us at the Aicon Gallery for an evening of literary erotica, sex trivia, and other surprises!

Writer/performer Anna Khaja sheds light on the historical and political forces surrounding Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007 while attempting to reunite a nation bitterly divided over the ideals of Islam and democracy. Through the monologues of eight characters that take place in the minutes before...

Literary administrators of color are still a rarity. Representatives will discuss diversifying the field on a collegial and programmatic level, as well as the retention and recruitment of minority administrators within the literary nonprofit industry, the academy, and beyond. The discussion will be followed by a brief Q&A with the audience.

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. In this workshop, we will employ techniques of poetry and fiction to create works of Memoir and Autobiographical Fiction. Through original writing exercises, we will learn literary techniques including character, dialogue, setting and story arc. In our writing, we will draw upon both the truths and lies of our experience because our lives are too rich not to write about and our imaginations are too strong to ignore. All levels of writers are welcome.

Chef Eddie Huang of VICE food travelogue “Fresh Off the Boat” talks about his new memoir of the same name with Hot 97 deejay, Miss Info. Fresh Off the Boat is a true foodie’s journey, taking readers from theme-park America to Baohaus, the East Village Taiwanese street food joint Huang...

CANCELLED DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER

Join Drunken Boat, one of the world's oldest e-literary journals, and Open City as they celebrate its 16th issue with special folios on Art, Barry Hannah, Exploration, Fiction, Asian American Urbanisms, Sound Art/Dissonance, Speculative and Trance Poetics. Contributors will read pieces featured in the issue.

You're a writer. We know it. You know it. We also know that sometimes the hardest part isn't getting your ideas down on paper, but getting your manuscript out of the slush pile. It's hard to know where to start, especially if you've got a full-time job or are raising...

Join longtime activists, advocates, writers, and photographers to discuss the effects of natural disasters and poverty on low-income communities of color in New York City. Panelists include: Jason Chan, Organizer, CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities Bethany Li, Staff Attorney, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund Alisa Pizarro, Public Housing Resident...

Postponed-new date coming soon

Join us for a night of translation as we welcome award winning translators and writers: Fady Joudah, Sinan Antoon, Susan Bernofsky, Jeffrey Yang, and Ghassan Zaqtan. Renowned writers in their own right, they will read literature spanning China and Japan to new innovations in Palestinian poetry, including work by  Mahmoud...

Tarun Tejpal, founder of Tehelka—India’s leading political magazine, guides us through the corridors of power and into the belly of India’s forgotten underclass in his novel The Story of My Assassins. Recently released in the United States, The Story of My Assassins follows a journalist’s investigation into the plot of...

“Kitamura’s words are tough, and her characters are tied to the tails of wounded beasts: mother countries, the land itself, and hierarchies both out of steam and out of date...Kitamura makes the end of history— many histories—seem both casual and immediate,” says Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker. Set in...

American Book Award-winning author Jeff Biggers joins us on the East Coast to report on the situation on the ground of Arizona post- SB 1070. In his new book, State Out of the Union: Arizona and the Final Showdown Over the American Dream, Biggers diagnoses the root of the problem...

Much-anticipated for its “fierce, fresh language,” Jay Caspian Kang’s debut novel melds pop culture, sports fandom, and high literature into a trippy neo-noir novel. Join us on for a reading and discussion with Grantland editor Jay Caspian Kang and writer Hua Hsu. Meet Phil Kim- twentysomething MFA grad and online...

Long overdue is our salute to Sikh Americans’ contributions to stand-up comedy and spoken word. Jen Kwok and Ed Lin host a night of levity and healing on the inauspicious 9/11. Polish off your jokes and rhymes to join the open mic roll call and showcase your talents. Harnessing socially-conscious...

It's easy to bat around issues about character, plot, point of view, description, dialogue, setting, pacing, voice and theme (whew!) in terms of writing. But Ed Lin promises to spend as little time as possible talking about those concepts. Lin believes writing is akin to playing a musical instrument that...