Past Events

RSVP HERE! Authors Sindya Bhanoo (Seeking Fortune Elsewhere) and Thrity Umrigar (Honor) will join the Asian American Writers' Workshop this March to read from and discuss their work. Their haunting, intimate, and unforgettable fiction illuminates the lives of women in India and the wider the Indian diaspora, from Tamil Nadu...

Join writer and perfumer Tanaïs for a multisensory exploration of their latest book, In Sensorium: Notes For My People. This expansive memoir offers a critical alternate history of South Asia, written from an American Bangladeshi Muslim femme perspective, and interrogates the ancient violence and ancestral trauma of a lush land...

Join us for a virtual, bilingual group event to celebrate the release of The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, edited and collected by Yu Chen and Regina Kanyu Wang. This event is co-presented with Tor Books, and will be moderated by C Pam Zhang.

RSVP HERE! Mic Check! Are you a writer? Come share your work at our next edition of our open mic, Mouth to Mouth. Curated and hosted by the magical Kay Ulanday Barrett and Jimena Lucero! This month we’re featuring lady wednesday and Saida Agostini. Mouth to Mouth seeks to provide a...

PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novelist Julie Otsuka joins PEN Out Loud and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop to launch her first novel in over a decade, The Swimmers. Turning her attention to a group of recreational swimmers who are disrupted from their routine when a crack appears at the bottom of their...

Mondays, 2/21/2022 and 2/28/2022 | 6 PM ET - 9 PM ET Online | 2 Sessions | REGISTER HERE! Sliding Scale $100-$200 | **Limited Scholarship Seats Available By Lottery: APPLY HERE! ***The Asian American Writers’ Workshop is a space that seeks to uplift and celebrate BIPOC and queer, trans, and nonbinary...

RSVP HERE Join Lan Samantha Chang, director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop in conversation with former AAWW Margins Fellow and debut novelist Sarah Thankam Mathews to celebrate her new novel, The Family Chao, a literary mystery centered on a Chinese-American family set in a small town in Wisconsin. This event...

RSVP HERE Join us in celebrating two highly anticipated February releases: Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark and Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the Twentieth Century. Nagamatsu and Fu will join the Asian American Writers' Workshop to discuss the ways their work blurs the boundary between the...

REGISTER HERE Celebrate Word is Bond’s new home at AAWW with our inaugural partnership reading! Attendance is FREE but suggested donations will benefit Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund & Racing Magpie, an organization supporting Lakota artists & culture bearers. If you have the means, please consider sparing what you’re able &...

RSVP HERE The Asian American Writers' Workshop, in partnership with PEN America and Singapore Unbound, will convene a bilingual reading of work from the forthcoming anthology Picking Off New Shoots Will Not Stop the Spring: Witness Poems and Essays from Burma/Myanmar 1988-2021, followed by a conversation with editors Brian Haman and Ko...

RSVP HERE This February, we're welcoming a powerhouse line-up of Asian American novelists to the Workshop's virtual stage, featuring Jessamine Chan, Jean Chen Ho, and Weike Wang in conversation on their highly anticipated 2022 releases, The School for Good Mothers, Fiona and Jane, and Joan is Okay. Jessamine, Jean, and Weike...

BUY TICKETS HERE Symphony Space and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop present a celebration of journalist, playwright, and political activist Wajahat Ali’s funny, wise, and necessary memoir Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American. Emceed by Ali, this evening of storytelling,...

RSVP HERE! Mic Check! Are you a writer? Come share your work at our next edition of our open mic, Mouth to Mouth. Curated and hosted by the magical Kay Ulanday Barrett and Jimena Lucero! This month we’re featuring kiki nicole and Tivali Thomas. Mouth to Mouth seeks to provide...

REGISTER HERE In December, we'll celebrate the final event of our AAWW at 30 retrospective series with Amitava Kumar, Monica Youn, Alexander Chee, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and Hua Hsu. These writers from our community have all played a unique role in the Workshop's history – from hosting their first book...

REGISTER HERE! ONLINE: 12/11, 2 PM ET - 5 PM ET / 1 PM CT - 4 PM CT SLIDING SCALE $50 - $100 ***Limited scholarship seats are available by lottery. To put your name in the hat, please complete this form. Applicants will be contacted 1 week prior to...

RSVP HERE! Join us as we celebrate the launch of Neel Patel's debut novel, Tell Me How to Be, with a reading and 1:1 author conversation with Neel. This "daring, hilarious, poignant" (Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies) story of the bond between an Indian-American mother...

RSVP HERE! In December we will convene a panel of Pacific Islander poets, activists, and scholars to discuss the driving forces behind their work, and their connections to Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio's forthcoming book  Remembering Our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea. Incorporating discussions of their creative work and scholarship, our...

REGISTER HERE! ONLINE: 11/30, 6 PM ET - 9 PM ET SLIDING SCALE $50 - $100 *** Limited tuition support available. Please see below for instructions  *** Join us for a workshop with Arlene Ducao and Myeong Hong Hurwitz as they dive into the language of emojis and design! The...

RSVP HERE! The Asian American Writers' Workshop was founded in 1991 by four friends, who shared a passion and energy for uplifting the work of Asian American writers. Publishing literature from the Asian diaspora has been at the heart of the Workshop's mission since the organization's founding, and as we...

RSVP HERE! Join us this November for a celebration of former AAWW Margins Fellow Kyle Lucia Wu and her newly released novel, Win Me Something, a self-aware bildungsroman with a deep yearning for belonging, revealing chasms and the malleability of deep-seated relationships. Kyle will be joined in conversation with authors T...

Join us as we celebrate Mayukh Sen’s new book, Taste Makers, which brings forward the stories of seven immigrant women whose legacies are complicated and often erased, despite their outsized global influence on food. Their histories unwrap, layer by layer, issues of labor, immigration and gender. Mayukh will be joined in conversation by novelist Monique Truong.

RSVP HERE! This October, join us for a celebratory reading with our 2021 Open City Fellows, as they read from, and discuss the work they have completed over the course of their Fellowship term. We’ll hear from Open City Neighborhood Fellows Jessica Jacolbe and Teresa Mathew, who have been documenting...

For AAWW at 30, we'll celebrate with leaders of major Asian American organizations and publications the importance of finding a space of our own plus the literal and figurative definitions of home. Moderated by Cathy Linh Che of Kundiman, the panel features our very own Jafreen Uddin, Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific Center, and Snigdha Sur of The Juggernaut.

Mic Check! Are you a writer? Come share your work at our next edition of our open mic, Mouth to Mouth. Curated and hosted by the magical Kay Ulanday Barrett and Jaden Fields! This month we’re featuring Muriel Leung and féi hernandez.

As writers in diaspora, the western imagination of the “lyric I” can impose harmful and reductive gazes unto our poetry. How do we wrestle with these narratives under the failed and limited imagination of empire? In this generative and discussion-based workshop led by poet George Abraham, we will look beyond respectability, linearity, and digestibility.

Our quarterly Fireside Chat series brings an Asian diasporic author, artist, or academic into conversation with Jafreen Uddin, Executive Director of the Asian American Writers' Workshop. Jafreen will be joined by debut novelist Nawaaz Ahmed (Radiant Fugitives) to share updates from the Workshop, and to discuss uplifting the next generation of Asian American creators.

AAWW in collaboration with the Leela Dance Collective presents BECOMING THE ARCHER: a conversation on classical dance and literature between world renowned Kathak artist Rachna Nivas and author of The Archer Shruti Swamy.

Join us to celebrate Albert Samaha's powerful new release, Concepcion. This intimate and incisive memoir explores the unjust legacy of imperialism in the Philippines and the pursuit of a dream through the lens of the author's family migration history. Albert will be joined in conversation by writer and editor, Matt Ortile.

RSVP HERE! Twenty years after 9/11, leading Muslim screenwriters come together to discuss the state of Muslim American representation onscreen. Panelists will wrestle with the multi-faceted challenges of representing a tremendously diverse population, exploring how far we've come and, just as critically, how far we still have to go. Featuring...

Saturday, 9/18, Sunday 9/19 | 3 PM - 5:30 PM ET Online | 2 Sessions | REGISTER HERE! Sliding Scale $100-$200 | Limited Scholarship Seats Available This class welcomes everyone regardless of past experience with programming or game design. No previous programming or game development experience needed! Using interactive fiction...