Formation 1991 Executive Director Ken Chen | Type not-for-profit | |
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Purpose Asian American literature | ||
The Asian American Writers' Workshop is a nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 1991 to support writers, literature and community. The Workshop also offers the annual Asian American Literary Awards and sponsors Page Turner: The Asian American Literary Festival.
Contents
In 2007, The Asian American Writers' Workshop partnered with Hyphen Magazine 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, Sunil Yapa, Shivani Manghnani, and Timothy Tau. Previous judges include Porochista Khakpour, Yiyun Li, Alexander Chee, Jaed Coffin, Brian Leung, Monique Truong and Monica Ferrell.
Honorary advisors
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, pushing back at the idea that writers of color might find greater success in the publishing industry if their names were whitewashed.