The Asian American Writers' Workshop (often abbreviated AAWW) is a nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 1991 to support Asian American writers, literature and community. Cofounders Curtis Chin, Christina Chiu, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, and Bino A. Realuyo created AAWW because they were searching for New York City community of writers of color who could provide support for new writers. The Asian American Writers Workshop runs two fellowship programs for emerging Asian American writers. The Open City fellowship is focused on journalism in a New York neighborhood, whether in the form of narrative nonfiction, creative nonfiction, or memoir. The Margins Fellowship is for writers based in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, aged thirty and under, who work in the genres of poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction. Notable Margins fellows include Yale Younger Poet Yanyi. The Workshop also offers the Asian American Literary Awards and sponsors Page Turner: The Asian American Literary Festival. In 2007, AAWW partnered with

Hyphen Magazine ''Hyphen'' is an American print and online magazine, founded in 2002 by a group of San Francisco Bay Area journalists, activists, and artists including Melissa Hung, a former reporter for the ''Houston Press'' and ''East Bay Express''; Claire Lig ...

to start a short story contest called the Hyphen Asian American Short Story Contest, the only national, pan-Asian American writing competition of its kind. Previous winners include

Preeta Samarasan Preeta Samarasan is a Malaysian author writing in English whose first novel, ''Evening Is the Whole Day'', won the Hopwood Novel Award (while she was doing her MFA at the University of Michigan), was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2 ...

, Sunil Yapa, Shivani Manghnani, and

Timothy Tau Timothy Tau (born Timothy Tau Hsieh ( ); Chinese: 謝韜; pinyin: Xiè Tāo) is a Taiwanese-American writer, engineer, attorney, law professor and filmmaker. Tau won the 2011 ''Hyphen magazine, Hyphen'' Asian American Writers' Workshop Short St ...

. Previous judges include

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Yiyun Li Yiyun Li (born November 4, 1972) is a Chinese-born writer and professor in the United States. Her short stories and novels have won several awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award and Guardian First Book Award for ''A Thousand Years of Good Pra ...

Alexander Chee Alexander Chee (born August 21, 1967) is an American fiction writer, poet, journalist and reviewer. Born in Rhode Island, he spent his childhood in South Korea, Kauai, Chuuk Lagoon, Truk, Guam and Maine. He attended Wesleyan University and the I ...

, Jaed Coffin, Brian Leung, Monique Truong and

Monica Ferrell Shana Monica Ferrell (born November 8, 1975) is an American poet and fiction writer. In 2007, she was awarded the Kathryn A. Morton Prize for her debut book of poems, ''Beasts for the Chase''. Her novel, ''The Answer Is Always Yes,'' was published ...

Honorary advisors

Harold Augenbraum Harold Augenbraum (born March 31, 1953) is an American writer, editor, and translator. He is the former Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, and former member of the Board of Trustees of the Asian American Writers Workshop, and fo ...

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (born Chitralekha Banerjee, 1956) is an Indian-born American author, poet, and the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Writing at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Her short story collection, ''Arrang ...

Jessica Hagedorn Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn (born 1949) is an American playwright, writer, poet, and multimedia performance artist. Biography Hagedorn is an American of mixed descent. She was born in Manila to a Scots-Irish-French-Filipino mother and a Spanish Fi ...

Kimiko Hahn Kimiko Hahn (born July 5, 1955) is an American poet and distinguished professor in the MFA program of Queens College, CUNY. Her works frequently deal with the reinvention of poetic forms and the intersecting of conflicting identities. Biography ...

* Andrew Hsiao *

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* Elaine Kim *

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Russell Leong Russell Charles Leong (born 1950) is an academic editor, professor, writer, and long-time Chen-style t'ai chi ch'uan student. The long-time editor of Amerasia Journal (1977–2010), Leong was an adjunct professor of English and Asian-American Studi ...

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Literary Magazine

AAWW's online literary magazine, ''The Margins,'' was launched in 2012. The magazine proclaims itself as being "dedicated to the Asian American creative culture of tomorrow," publishes a variety of literature by Asian American writers including short fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, and more. Through its published works and dedication to social justice, the magazine imagines a "vibrant, nuanced, multiracial, and transnational Asian America." Since the magazine's start in 2012, ''The Margins'' has received over one million views with an average of 3,000 people a week. The magazine has three special projects: Open City, which reports in-depth stories from Asian immigrant communities in New York City; the Transpacific Literary Project (TLP), which showcases East and Southeast Asian writers and publishes literary work from the region; and A World Without Cages (AWWC), which publishes work by incarcerated writers and brings more Asian American voices into the anti-incarceration movement. In 2019, ''The Margins'' was one of five recipients of the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize.

Response to controversy

In response to the 2015 "yellowface poet" incident, the organization published a "white pen name" generator, which creates random white-sounding names "all the way back to Plymouth Rock." It was made in mockery of

Michael Derrick Hudson Michael Derrick Hudson (born 1963) is an American poet and librarian. Hudson is employed at the Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne where his job includes encoding articles for the Periodical Source Index (PERSI).

, pushing back at the idea that writers of color might find greater success in the publishing industry if their names were whitewashed.

References

External links

Asian American Writers' WorkshopThe Margins
includin
Open City

Hyphen Asian American Short Story Contest
Arts organizations established in 1991 Asian-American organizations Organizations based in New York City American writers' organizations Asian-American literature 1991 establishments in New York City {{US-arts-org-stub