Events

• June 26, 7:00 PM

  Outsiders

  Come see three spellbinding authors whose new works explore themes of invisibility and erasure through writing that dreams, drifts, and floats like smoke. YZ Chin’s Though I Get Home examines the fringe of Malaysian culture, politics, and postcolonial memory through intertwined tales of fate and perseverance; Kirkus Reviews calls it “a haunting, surprising, and rebellious collection that contains multitudes.” In Let’s No One Get Hurt, Jon Pineda weaves a lyrical coming-of-age story that reckons with racial and socioeconomic injustice, and, through protagonist Pearl, animates the lives of those pushed to the periphery in the American South. C. Dale Young is a prize-winning poet whose fiction debut, The Affliction, traces the lives of people who know what is to be disappeared, harkening to the desaparecidos of Latin American history. RESERVE A SEAT! $5 SUGGESTED DONATION | OPEN TO THE PUBLIC YZ Chin’s debut novel Though I Get Home (Feminist Press, 2018) received widespread critical acclaim for its multidimensional exploration of Malaysia, the alienating dissonance between imposed and self-ascribed identities, and the difficult journey towards finding a voice. Though I Get Home is the premier winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize, which celebrates women and nonbinary writers of color. Mira T. Lee calls the book “a subversive take on the immigrant stories we’ve come to expect from ‘immigrant writers.’” Chin is the author of two poetry chapbooks: deter (Dancing Girl Press, 2013) and the forthcoming In Passing (Anomalous Press, 2019) contain similar themes of immigration and national identity. Born and raised in Taiping, Malaysia, Chin speaks three languages. She lives in New York and is an engineer by day and writer by night. Check out her interview in The Margins about writing against censorship, non-traditional “immigrant stories,” and writing a novel to think through her life. Let's No One Get Hurt (FSG, 2018) tells the story of 16-year-old Pearl: a girl who squats on abandoned property in the American South with her father after her mother leaves them. “Not a woman yet. But also not a girl,” Pearl calls herself “a poem no one will ever translate.” Pineda is the author of multiple works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. His 2010 memoir, Sleep in Me, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and Library Journal "Best Books of 2010" pick, and his 2013 novel, Apology, was the winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize. Pineda is also the author of award-winning poetry collections Little Anodynes, The Translator’s Diary, and Birthmark. He teaches at the College of William & Mary and is a core faculty member in the low-residency MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. C. Dale Young’s fiction debut The Affliction (Four Way Books, 2018) follows a man with the strange ability to disappear, a woman who sits in her kitchen, forever replaying a past memory, and a character who is aware of his impending death while no one is aware of him. Weaving together the lives of these characters in big cities like Los Angeles and Santa Monica, Young gives voice to the daily happenings of those rendered invisible by the bustle. Lambda Literary writes, “The Affliction is a haunting book, one that is rooted in a binding beautiful magic.” Young is the prize-winning author of four collections of poetry and other works, and has been published in anthologies and magazines including The Best American Poetry, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, and American Poetry Review. A recipient of the 2017/2018 Hanes Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, Young has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Based in San Francisco, he is a full-time medical practitioner and teaches at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. This event will be livestreamed on the Asian American Writers’ Facebook page. NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY *The space is wheelchair accessible. No stairs. Direct elevator from ground floor to 6th floor. *We strongly encourage all participants of the space/event to be scent-free. If you all have any other specific questions about accessibility, please email Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org with any questions on reserving priority seating. /\ /\ \/\/ \/\/..
  
• July 2, 6:30 PM

  Getting to Work: an Open Genre Workshop

  One session, 2 hours (6:30PM-9PM) Monday, July 2nd, 2018 Fees & Payment Options: General $75/Member $65 Why You Should Take This Class: In this 1-session “sprint” rendition of Balasubramanian’s previous 5-session workshop, participants will develop an honest, sustainable work plan for the next stage of their respective projects. Class Description: No matter what form your work takes—fiction, journalism, poetry, or something not written at all—learning "how to work" is a daunting but necessary process. Using improv, design, and writing exercises, we’ll collectively bridge that gap between the aspirational (dreams, wishes) and the practical (goals, time) so you can get to work. All manner of writers and creators welcome. REGISTER HERE. Janani Balasubramanian is a writer and gamemaker whose work has been presented at more than 160 stages across North America and Europe, including The Public Theater, MOMA, Abrons Arts Center, Andy Warhol Museum, Red Bull Arts, Ace Hotel, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Most recently, Balasubramanian premiered Heisenberg (a live audio game on uncertainty and chaos) at the New York High Line. Balasubramanian is currently a 2018-2020 Van Lier fellow at the Public Theater, and is working on Stargeit, a Cold War era novel about an extraordinary friendship. ..
  
• July 11, 7:00 PM

  A Reading

  Join us for an event that envisions the past and present of the Muslim World and Indo-Persian history through writing and visual art. Featuring Ruby Lal, the author of a new biography of the only female Mughal ruler, Nur Jahan, and visual artists Morehshin Allahyari and Shahzia Sikander. RESERVE A SEAT! $5 SUGGESTED DONATION | OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Morehshin Allahyari is an artist, activist, educator, and occasional curator. She is the recipient of the leading global thinkers of 2016 award by Foreign Policy magazine. Morehshin was born and raised in Iran and moved to the United States in 2007. She thinks about technology as a philosophical toolset to reflect on objects and as a poetic means to document our personal and collective lives struggles in the 21st century. Morehshin has been part of numerous exhibitions, festivals, and workshops around the world including Venice Biennale di Archittectura, Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal, Tate Modern, Queens Museum, Pori Museum, Powerhouse Museum, Jeu de Paume, Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, Museum für Angewandte Kunst. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Huffington Post, Wired, National Public Radio, Parkett Art Magazine, Frieze, Rhizome, Hyperallergic, and Al Jazeera, among others. Ruby Lal is professor of South Asian history at Emory University. She is the author of Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan (Norton, 2018), Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World, and Coming of Age in Nineteenth Century India: The Girl-Child and the Art of Playfulness. Shahzia Sikander received her BFA in 1991 from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995. Pakistani-born and internationally recognized, Sikander's pioneering practice takes Indo-Persian miniature painting as a point of departure. She challenges the strict formal tropes of miniature painting as well as its medium-based restrictions by experimenting with scale and media. Such media include animation, video, mural, and collaboration with other artists. Her process-based work is concerned with examining the forces at stake in contested cultural and political histories. Her work helped launch a major resurgence in the Miniature Painting department in the Nineties at the National College of Arts in Lahore, inspiring many others to examine the miniature tradition. Image credit: Shahzia Sikander, Still from SpiNN (2003). Women’s coiffures, transformed into black birds, invade a Mughal court in the video animation. This event will be livestreamed on the Asian American Writers’ Facebook page. NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY *The space is wheelchair accessible. No stairs. Direct elevator from ground floor to 6th floor. *We strongly encourage all participants of the space/event to be scent-free. If you all have any other specific questions about accessibility, please email Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org with any questions on reserving priority seating. /\ /\ \/\/ \/\/..