Past Events

Join Mae Ngai and Aziz Rana as they discuss family lives and legal battles that offer insight into the Chinese-American experience. Called an "absorbing story" by The New York Times, The Lucky Ones, the latest book by historian and Guggenheim fellow Mae Ngai, is a compelling account of three generations of the...

Linh Dinh and Cihan Kaan create landscapes where Coney Island meets Mars, post-war Saigon backdrops lovelorn characters, and rich boys pay to be Muslim for a day. In Love Like Hate, Linh Dinh, who writer Ed Park calls "one of the secret masters of short fiction," uses his deadpan humor to explore...

Yiyun Li has recently been named a MacArthur genius and featured as one of the Top 20 Writers under 40 by The New Yorker. Her latest collection of short stories, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, has been heralded as "brilliant" by Publishers Weekly and "further proof that [she] deserves to be considered among the best living fiction writers" by Kirkus...

Join hosts and curators Tina Chang and Tracy K. Smith for the fifth annual collaboration between Cave Canem and the Asian American Writers' Workshop. Featuring readings by Ken Chen, Eric Gamalinda, Tyehimba Jess and Patricia Smith. Detroit native Tyehimba Jess's leadbelly was a 2004 National Poetry Series selection. Library Journal and Black Issues Book Review both named...

Already sick of schoolwork? Ditch your #2 pencil, pick up you guitar and join New York natives actress Natalie Kim and writer and performer Samantha Chanse on Friday night: bring your best work (or your worst)—either way, drinks on us. Actress and New York native Natalie Kim recently completed a successful run...

Q&A with Steve Coll, New America Foundation Fatima Bhutto's third book, Songs of Blood and Sword, details her complicated childhood in Pakistan, wrestling with national history—from Partition to the post 9/11 "War on Terror"—and its relationship to her father's assassination and her family's political dynasty. Join Steve Coll, President of New America...

Why do we want to escape the places we were raised? How much do its bleachers and stadiums, its nosy neighbors and long-distance phone calls shape our coming-of-age? Poet Tishani Doshi reads from her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers. Called "captivating, delightful" by Salman Rushdie,The Pleasure Seekers follows the cross-cultural love affair...

Frank O'Hara famously said most poets were worse than the movies, but then he'd never heard of Movietelling. It's a multimedia literary performance genre that's as new as Youtube and video art and as old as 1920s Japan, where storytellers would "talk" over silent films in lieuof intertitles. Meera Nair...

Lan Samantha Chang's new novel, All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost, follows the trials of a class of emerging writers, their love/intimidation relationship with their brilliant poet professor, and the different ways they sacrifice their lives for writing. As Booklist praises, "it is [Chang's] indelible portrait of the loneliness of artistic endeavor that will...

A story of family secrets and discovery, of confession and revelation, Monique Truong's second novel Bitter in the Mouth follows Linda Hammerick, who has a secret sense—she can "taste" words. She falls for names and what they evoke: Canned peaches. Dill. Orange sherbet. Parsnip (to her great regret). In this celebration, actress...

The dress code is casual, and the alert level definitely high for this celebration of the release of Amitava Kumar's latest books, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb (non-fiction) and Nobody Does the Right Thing (fiction). Part reportage and part protest, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His...

Alabama’s got us so upset, Tennessee’s made us lose our rest, and now everybody knows about Arizona! Spoken word duo Brownstar and memoirist Jaed Coffin, led by hosts Ed Lin and Jen Kwok, will perform in response to SB 1070 and The Workshop’s WORDSTRIKE: Writers’ Boycott of Arizona. Bring your stories of...

Commencing at 11 pm on Saturday, August 14 (Pakistan's Independence Day) and continuing into the early morning hours of August 15 (India's Independence Day), UNIFICATION 2010 celebrates 63 years of independence and the voices of talented, socially conscious South Asian/American artists. With performances by DJ Rekha, The Kominas, Hari Kondabolu,...

Galleries, luxury condos, displacement, rezoning, affordable housing, neighborhood preservation. These are a few keywords in the active and ongoing conversation about gentrification, development, and urban change more broadly. But what is the role of writing in the face of this kind of urban change? Two activists, scholar Peter Kwong of Hunter College/CUNY...

Exhausted from having to walk around under the summer sun? Escape the heat with our sixth Open Mic of the year. This week we feature author Sung J. Woo whose short story "Limits" was an Editor's Choice winner in Carve Magazine's2008 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, and academic-turned-comedian Ali Wong whose...

In the United States alone, more than 139,000 children have been adopted internationally in the last ten years--many of whom were born in China and Korea. Transnational adoption is rewriting how we understand Asian American identity--by implicating parents of non-Asian American descent who are eager to connect their children with...

Although less than 0.7% of all literary books published in the United States as works in translation, translation acts as a central way we experience other cultures: including Asian.Sinan Antoon, Fayre Makeig and Lucas Klein come together to read their translations of Asian heavyweights like Mahmoud Darwish and H.E. Sayeh and discuss the...

The Montauk Club is pleased to announce an evening celebrating literature as part of our new reading series, No Book Jackets Required. Featuring authors Nelson George and Jessica Hagedorn and curated by James Hannaham, the event is produced in partnership with Ringshout and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. The reading...

How does movement—social, political or physical—affect our personal identities and those placed upon us? Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Gina Apostol, and Purvi Shah each address the shifting nature of identity and its relationship with movement in different ways. Sueyeun Juliette Lee's most recent collection of poetry focuses on Korea and explores...

Come hear one of the foremost Asian American novelists of her generation and the artist-activists who defined what it means for all of us to be Asian American. This special symposium features key activists Corky Lee, Tomie Arai, and Jack Tchen alongside Karen Tei Yamashita, whose new novel, I-Hotel, is destined...

Got a summer fling you want to tell the world about? Come by for our fifth Mouth to Mouth Open Mic of the year, featuring stand up comedian Vidur Kapur and poet Lisa Chen. Lisa's book of poetry, Mouth, uses everything from poems carved in the loneliness of Angel Island barracks...

In Letters to our Mothers, five writers celebrate the multi-faceted voices of South Asian women in Queens and what it means to be heard across distance. This rare joint production curated by Adhikaar’s Executive Director Luna Ranjit, in collaboration with Queens Council on the Arts and The Asian American Writers’...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk1LBTLGVaE&feature=player_embedded#action=share Start summer a little early with our raucous fourth Open Mic of the year, hosted by Jen Kwok and Ed Lin. This week will feature actress and writer Esther Chae—whose recent solo performance, So the Arrow Flies, was called “amazing and beautiful” by Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang—and stand up...

Parents, grandparents, aunties, and uncles bring your young ones to a day of children's book readings, craft activities, and delectable treats.   Location: TBA  

Come hear contributors from the The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, an unprecedented collection of essays on flash fiction.  

There's no better way to celebrate summer hitting its halfway mark than a good old-fashioned house party—AAWW style. Join New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee and others in a dumpling-making party complete with dim sum and wine. Make new friends, bring old friends and eat to your hearts content! For tickets,...

Come hear Kevin Nadal read from his groundbreaking textbook, Filipino American Psychology: A Handbook of Theory, Research, and Clinical Practice. Filipino American Psychology offers a comprehensive look at the psyche of Filipino Americans. By examining history, cultural values, influences of colonialism, community dynamics and intersections with other identities, the reader will have an...

A celebration of the unique contemporary role and historical legacy of Asian American comic artists, featuring the writers and editors of Secret Identities, the first-ever graphic novel anthology of Asian American superhero stories. Come join us at the newly renovated Museum of Chinese in America for this landmark event.

Join us for three critically acclaimed poets at Word For Word Poetry at the Bryant Park Reading Room.  

The power of place. Tsujimoto reads from his memoir Morningside Heights: New York Stories and Xi from her book of essays Evanescent Isles: From My City-Village.