THE FOUNDERS OF THE ASIAN AMERICAN WRITERS’ WORKSHOP IN CONVERSATION


PRIDE MARCH June 1991 following the Miss Saigon protest called "The Heat is on Miss Saigon".   In the picture:  Curtis Chin and Grace Suh  Also in the picture: Queerzilla created by artists Ken Chu, Paul Pfeiffer, Ming Ma and others.



PRIDE MARCH June 1991 following the Miss Saigon protest called “The Heat is on Miss Saigon”. In the picture:  Curtis Chin and Grace Suh Also in the picture: Queerzilla created by artists Ken Chu, Paul Pfeiffer, Ming Ma and others.


Mark your calendars, on June 22nd at 7PM ET/4PM PT, for the premiere of The Asian American Writers’ Workshop Founders in Conversation. For the first time these friends will talk about the very seeds that birthed this iconic organization.  


Co-curated by
Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race


and Asian American Writers’ Workshop



Panelists:

Curtis Chin
A graduate of the creative program at the University of Michigan, Curtis Chin has received awards from ABC/Disney Television, New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts and more. Chin has screened his films, Vincent Who? and Tested, with over 600 entities in sixteen countries including the White House, Amnesty International, and the Government of Norway. A co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, he is writing a memoir, “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant.” He can be found at CurtisFromDetroit.com. @curtischin

Christina Chiu is the Grand Prize Winner of the James Alan McPherson Award for her novel Beauty, which was also selected as a Kirkus Best Books of 2020. She is also author of Troublemaker and Other Saints, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Troublemaker was a nominee for the Stephen Crane First Fiction Award and winner of the Asian American Literary Award.

Chiu has published in Tin House, The New Guard, Washington Square, The MacGuffin, Charlie Chan is Dead 2, Not the Only One, Washington Square; she has won literary prizes from Playboy, New Stone Circle, El Dorado Writers’ Guild, and others.

Chiu hosts the virtual Let’s Talk Books Author Series and curates and co-hosts the Pen Parentis Literary Salon in New York City. She is a founding member of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Chiu is a shoe designer.


Marie Myung-Ok Lee
Marie Myung-Ok Lee's novel, The Evening Hero, is forthcoming with Simon & Schuster in 2022. Her young adult novel, Finding My Voice, has just been re-released by Soho Press, and her forthcoming YA, Hurt You, a contemporary retelling of Of Mice and Men, will be published in 2023. Her stories and essays have been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, Salon, Guernica, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Nation, and the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and forthcoming in Smithsonian Magazine. Lee is a cofounder and former board president of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and teaches fiction at Columbia where she is Writer in Residence.

She is also one of the few journalists who has been granted a visa to visit North Korea, which she did in 2004. It is the setting for The Evening Hero. Follow her on Twitter and Insta: @MarieMyungOkLee

Bino Realuyo PoemTeller/Fictionist/Educator Bino A. Realuyo is the author of The Gods We Worship Live Next Door and The Umbrella Country, and editor of The NuyorAsian Anthology: Asian American Writings about New York City (AAWW/Temple, 1999).  He recently completed two more books:  Funny Little Island People (short stories) and #TheRebelSonnets (poetry).  His new works can be found in the recent issues of The Harvard Review, The Georgia Review, The Common, Salamander, North American Review, New American Writing, Missouri Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and ZYZZYVA.  A graduate of Harvard University, he lives in NYC and has worked as an adult educator and immigrant rights/community organizer for the past 25 years.  Read about his reflections on the past 30 years of activism and community work at binoarealuyo.comFollow him on Twitter and Instagram:  @BinoARealuyo



Athena Robles