AAWW Radio: New Asian American Writers & Literature
88 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 46 ratingsAAWW Radio is the podcast of the Asian American Writers' Workshop, an NYC literary arts space at the intersection of migration, race, and social justice. Listen to AAWW Radio and you’ll hear selected audio from our current and past events, as well as occasional original episodes. We’ve hosted established writers like Claudia Rankine, Maxine Hong Kingston, Roxane Gay, Amitav Ghosh, Ocean Vuong, Solmaz Sharif, and Jenny Zhang. Our events are intimate and intellectual, quirky yet curated, and dedicated to social justice. We curate our events to juxtapose novelists and activists, poets and intellectuals, and bring together people who usually wouldn’t be in the same room. We’ve got it all: from avant-garde poetry to post-colonial politics, feminist comics to lyric verse, literary fiction to dispatches from the left. A sanctuary for the immigrant imagination, we believe Asian American stories deserve to be told. Learn more by visiting aaww.org
Produced by the Asian American Writers' Workshop.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Matthew Salesses Interviewed by May Ngo
May 12, 2021 04:30 - 50 minutes - 69.1 MBWe have a special interview with author Matthew Salesses, conducted by writer and anthropologist May Ngo back in February. Together, they dissect Matthew’s book Craft in the Real World, and have deep conversations about making writing workshops more equally accessible and how to think about one’s audience. They question the concept of agency, and how stories of lack of agency can actually feel more grounding, as well as dig into difficult questions of responsibility to our communities as wri...
Crying in H Mart ft. Michelle Zauner & Hrishikesh Hirway
May 05, 2021 04:30 - 1 hour - 55.5 MBAAWW and indie bookstore Books Are Magic partned together to celebrate musician Michelle Zauner’s debut memoir, Crying In H Mart. Best known for her work as the musician Japanese Breakfast, Zauner’s memoir is an astonishing debut: a rich, intimate, and lyrical story about finding yourself, and the enduring power of food and family. Zauner is joined in conversation at this event by Hrishikesh Hirway, musician and host/producer of the podcasts Song Exploder, Home Cooking, and more.
How Much of These Hills is Gold ft. C Pam Zhang, Karen Chee
April 28, 2021 04:30 - 1 hour - 57.5 MBAAWW celebrates the paperback launch of C Pam Zhang’s debut novel How Much of These Hills is Gold, which was longlisted for The Booker Prize, among other accolades. Since its publication last spring, this haunting, spare, and achingly beautiful novel has been widely praised for turning its unflinching gaze on the people and legends of the American West, illuminating the voices of those who are often forgotten in the margins of history. Joining Pam in conversation to celebrate her book is wri...
Anti-Asian Violence and Black-Asian Solidarity Today
April 14, 2021 04:30 - 1 hour - 109 MBWe're featuring audio from our recent event Anti-Asian Violence and Black-Asian Solidarity Today presented by Tamara K. Nopper. This lecture examines the merging of fighting “anti-Asian violence” with the promotion of “Black-Asian solidarity” in the context of COVID-19, and considers the work these narratives are doing and if they challenge or promote carceral logic. What might these narratives reveal or conceal about Asian Americans and racial politics?How does the legacy of the 1992 LA Re...
#WeToo: Journal of Asian American Studies
April 07, 2021 04:30 - 47 minutes - 43.7 MBIn time for the Association of Asian American Studies Conference that kicks off this week, we’re reposting an episode from the newly launched Journal of Asian American Studies podcast! We discuss a unique special issue of The Journal of Asian American Studies: #WeToo, a reader of Art, Poetry, Fiction, and Memoir, that seeks to answer the question, “What does sexual violence look like in the lives of those hailed as “model minority?” Intended as a reader for the college classroom, the #WeToo ...
The City of Good Death ft. Priyanka Champaneri and Marjan Kamali
April 01, 2021 04:30 - 59 minutes - 54.5 MBWe're celebrating Priyanka Champaneri’s debut novel, The City of Good Death. Priyanka will be in conversation with special guest Marjan Kamali, author of The Stationery Shop. Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, The City of Good Death is an immersive family saga exploring death, rebirth, and redemption set in India’s holy city of Banaras.
Northern Light ft. Kazim Ali and Billy-Ray Belcourt
March 24, 2021 04:30 - 1 hour - 56.9 MBAcclaimed poet, novelist, and essayist Kazim Ali joins the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Milkweed Editions to launch his new memoir, Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water. Northern Light, a sensitive and elegantly structured exploration of land and power, is told through Ali’s recollections of his childhood in Manitoba, and the relationships he built with the indigenous Pimicikamak community, his former neighbors and fierce environmental activists. Ali is joined in conv...
My Year Abroad ft. Chang-rae Lee and Bryan Washington
March 17, 2021 04:30 - 1 hour - 60.9 MBJoin the Asian American Writers’ Workshop as we celebrate award-winning writer Chang-rae Lee’s electrifying new novel, My Year Abroad. A surprising, tender, and humorous work, My Year Abroad is a story unique to Chang-rae Lee’s immense talents as a writer, and explores the division between East and West, capitalism, mental health, mentorship, and much more. Chang-rae will be joined in conversation by Bryan Washington, award-winning author of Lot and Memorial.
Brown Baby ft. Nikesh Shukla & Mira Jacob
March 10, 2021 05:30 - 59 minutes - 54.3 MBAAWW is delighted to celebrate the launch of writer Nikesh Shukla’s new memoir, Brown Baby: A Memoir of Race, Family, and Home. An intimate look at love, grief, and fatherhood, Shukla’s memoir “bears witness to our turbulent times” (Bernardine Evaristo) with humor, honesty, and hope. Shukla is joined in conversation by Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk.
Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism
March 03, 2021 05:30 - 1 hour - 98.3 MBIn the anthology Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism!, Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman have collected a bold group of emerging writers whose prescient and intimate writing paints an expansive portrait of the experience of being women and femmes of color. The first edition of the anthology became an instant classic in 2002, and this updated 2019 edition was a protest to the political Trump regime in our country. The experiences and intellectual insights in Colonize This!...
Radical Thinkers ft. Simon Han and Tahseen Shams
February 24, 2021 05:30 - 1 hour - 97.1 MBOur series Radical Thinkers places radical academics directly in conversation with trailblazing writers, poets, and artists, creating and nurturing two-way dialogues that will interrogate some of the most pressing issues facing Asian and Asian diasporic communities today. Featuring an interdisciplinary lineup of scholars and creatives, these unexpected pairings will center revolutionary discourse and scholarship in an effort to demystify intellectual debates, collapse the divide between the ...
Minari ft. Lee Isaac Chung and Min Jin lee
February 17, 2021 05:30 - 36 minutes - 50.2 MBWe're celebrating the release of Lee Isaac Chung's critically acclaimed film Minari, a tender portrait of a Korean-American family that moves to an Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. Today’s podcast features audio from our pre-release screening talkback with director Lee Isaac Chung and novelist Min Jin Lee.
Land of Big Numbers ft. Te-Ping Chen and Charles Yu
February 10, 2021 05:30 - 1 hour - 85.6 MBJoin the Asian American Writers’ Workshop for the official launch of Te-Ping Chen’s extraordinary debut short story collection, Land of Big Numbers. Assured and immersive, the stories in Land of Big Numbers move confidently between the United States and China, shifting from realism to magical realism, and forming intimate portraits that draw from Chen’s years of working as a journalist in China. For this launch event, Chen will be joined in conversation by Charles Yu, author of the National ...
Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities
February 04, 2021 05:30 - 1 hour - 107 MBWhat are the radical possibilities of catalyzing cross-racial feminist solidarities, imaginations, and substantive realities? What revolutions must we create within ourselves to dismantle our prejudices, discrimination, and silences to create the world we want to see? Today’s podcast features audio from our recent event Siblings in Liberation, Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities, which celebrated the editorial collaboration between Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Col...
Imagining Identity Across the Pond ft. Romalyn Ante, Will Harris, and April Yee
January 27, 2021 05:30 - 1 hour - 100 MBAAWW and London-based writer April Yee present a reading with two of the UK’s leading poets: Will Harris (RENDANG) and Romalyn Ante (Antiemetic for Homesickness). Following their reading, Will and Romalyn examine how Asian identity is constructed outside of the United States and discuss the ways British colonialism and capitalism continue to shape ideas of what and who belongs. Moderated by April Yee.
The Past is Not for Living In ft. Gish Jen and Meng Jin
January 20, 2021 05:30 - 1 hour - 86.6 MBJoin the Asian American Writers’ Workshop for our first event of the new year: a joint paperback launch of Gish Jen’s The Resisters and Meng Jin’s Little Gods. These two novels, released in early 2020, sketch out a dystopian near future that takes aim at several current catastrophes, and examine history, absence, and the passage of time as filtered through the individual immigrant experience. Together, these works break new ground for the dystopian and immigrant novels, and we hope you will ...
AGGIE ft. Mahogany L. Browne, Adnan Khan, Tanya Selvaratnam and Rachel Kuo
January 13, 2021 05:30 - 1 hour - 92.1 MBIn November 2020 we co-hosted a screening with Film Forum of the documentary AGGIE, on the life of philanthropist Agnes Gund, founder of the Art For Justice Fund. Following the screening, we co-hosted a talkback with activists and Art For Justice grantees Adnan Khan and Mahogany Browne, and producer Tanya Selvaratnam, moderated by Rachel Kuo. Today, we're thrilled to share audio of that conversation with you. This recording was originally shared on Film Forum's podcast 'Film Forum Present...
The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar ft. Kavita Das, Jafreen Uddin
January 06, 2021 21:46 - 56 minutes - 77.9 MBAuthor Kavita Das joins Jafreen Uddin, Executive Director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in conversation about her book, Poignant Song: The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar. Shankar, who was Grammy-nominated, was the most prominent Indian female musician in the movement that brought Indian music to the West in the late 1960’s. This event, co-presented by Asian American Writers’ Workshop and the South Asia Institute in Chicago, explores Shankar’s musical evolution and more-than-se...
Fireside Chat: R.O. Kwon with AAWW E.D. Jafreen Uddin
December 23, 2020 05:30 - 29 minutes - 40.6 MBWe're launching a new virtual event series at AAWW. Presented quarterly, these virtual “fireside chats” will feature a renowned Asian diasporic author in conversation with our Executive Director Jafreen Uddin, sharing updates from AAWW, and discussing AAWW from a writer’s perspective. This series will kick off with a conversation led by R. O. Kwon, activist, NEA Fellow, and bestselling author of The Incendiaries.
Racing the Essay with Cathy Park Hong, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Sejal Shah, and Piyali Bhattacharya
December 09, 2020 05:30 - 1 hour - 105 MBThis fall, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop is celebrating the art of the essay. Featuring longtime poets and fiction writers with debut essay collections out this year, this conversation will take an intersectional look at Asian American identity, genre, gender, race, publishing, and the way the essay form allows writers to dance, dodge, spar, and move through time and nature to tell important stories. Featuring Cathy Park Hong, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Sejal Shah, and moderated by Pi...
Asian American Young Adult Fiction with Ed Lin, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, and Ruth Minah Buchwald
December 02, 2020 05:30 - 1 hour - 107 MBAAWW, Kundiman, & Kaya Press combine to bring acclaimed novelist Ed Lin together with pioneering YA author of FINDING MY VOICE and co-founder of AAWW Marie Myung-Ok Lee, in conversation to celebrate the release of Ed Lin’s YA debut, DAVID TUNG CAN’T HAVE A GIRLFRIEND UNTIL HE GETS INTO AN IVY LEAGUE COLLEGE (Kaya Press, October 2020). Moderated by Ruth Minah Buchwald, Ed Lin and Marie Lee’s dialogue will orbit themes, such as: Asian American study culture; the pitfalls of the “model minori...
The Voice of Sheila Chandra with Kazim Ali, Sheila Chandra, and Rajiv Mohabir
November 25, 2020 05:30 - 1 hour - 95.9 MBWe're celebrating the launch of Kazim Ali’s newest poetry collection, The Voice of Sheila Chandra. Following a reading from Ali’s innovative and musical new collection, he will be joined in conversation by Sheila Chandra and Rajiv Mohabir to discuss sound, silence, and embodied art-making practice, as they reflect on Ali’s poetry, Chandra’s music, and Mohabir’s poetry and translation. Support the writers! Buy their books via our local independent bookstore partner Books Are Magic
Shithole Country Clubs by Nina Sharma
November 18, 2020 05:30 - 42 minutes - 59.6 MBWe’re very excited to bring you an audio long read of “Shithole Country Clubs” an essay by Nina Sharma, recently published in The Margins. Named an Editor’s Pick at Longreads, “Shithole Country Clubs” is a hilarious and critical essay about Trump's New Jersey country club — the very golf club where he recently infected everyone with Covid-19 — and Indian weddings. READ the original essay here in The Margins: https://aaww.org/shithole-country-clubs/
The Sweat of Love & the Fire of Truth with Akwaeke Emezi, Elizabeth Acevedo, & Sophia Hussain
November 04, 2020 05:30 - 1 hour - 61 MBThe Asian American Writers’ Workshop is thrilled to celebrate the launch of Akwaeke Emezi’s new book THE DEATH OF VIVEK OJI and the recent release of Elizabeth Acevedo’s CLAP WHEN YOU LAND and WRITE YOURSELF A LANTERN: A JOURNAL INSPIRED BY THE POET X. The two authors read from their new works and have a moderated conversation with writer and Berkeley Center for New Media Events Coordinator Sophia Hussain.
Good Talks with Tina Chang & Mira Jacob
October 22, 2020 04:30 - 1 hour - 62.8 MBTina Chang and Mira Jacob join the Asian American Writers’ Workshop to celebrate the paperback releases of their books Hybrida and Good Talk. Following a reading from their work, they will speak to the intersections of their experiences and creative practices, discussing race, motherhood, and hybrid storytelling structures.
Translating Letters for Black Lives - Asian Americana
October 15, 2020 14:00 - 1 hour - 62.9 MBOn this episode we are excited to repost a recent episode of Asian Americana, a podcast about Asian American culture and history hosted and produced by Quincy Surasmith. Letters for Black Lives is an ongoing crowdsourced effort to create and translate multilingual and culturally-aware resources that open a space for families and communities to have honest discussion about racial justice, police violence, and anti-Blackness. Quincy took part in a series for publication on AAWW's online mag...
Burial is Beginning: K-Ming Chang & Franny Choi
October 06, 2020 04:30 - 1 hour - 67 MBAAWW hosted the launch for K-Ming Chang’s debut novel, Bestiary, with a reading and conversation with K-Ming and Franny Choi. Exploring the ways writing about girlhood can reinvent our definitions of community and lineage, and the ways we can grapple with and imagine beyond threats of violence that often shape daughterhood, this conversation delves into family and queer girlhood as a generative space of resistance and reinvention, monstrousness and memory.
Global Chinatowns: Histories of Resistance & Community
August 20, 2020 04:30 - 1 hour - 108 MBWelcome to our Love Letter to Chinatown Episode! We’re happy to feature Mei Lum, Diane Wong, and Huiying B. Chan, the curators of Homeward Bound: Global Intimacies in Converging Chinatowns, hosted at the Pao Arts Center in Boston. The exhibit tells the stories of displacement, migration, resilience and grassroots organizing in Chinatowns around the world through photography, found objects, oral histories, and poetry. Writer and organizer Huiying B. Chan travelled to Chinatowns in eight di...
AAWW Fave: You Don't Say No To Yuri Kochiyama (ft. Fred Ho, Diane C. Fujino, Baba Herman Ferguson, Esperanza Martell, Laura Whitehorn)
May 19, 2020 04:30 - 1 hour - 110 MBToday is the legendary activist Yuri Kochiyama’s birthday! We’re celebrating by revisiting one of our favorite episodes of AAWW Radio, You Don’t Say No to Yuri Kochiyama. In 2005, scholar and activist Diane C. Fujino released the biography Heartbeat of Struggle: the Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama. An in-depth examination of Kochiyama's life, the book follows her early years in a concentration camp in Arkansas during World War II, to her friendship with Malcolm X in New York City...
AAWW Fave: Disability Justice (ft. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha & Cyrée Jarelle Johnson)
May 13, 2020 04:00 - 1 hour - 124 MBOne of our favorite episodes of AAWW Radio was from 2018 featuring Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice author Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in conversation with poet Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, author of SLINGSHOT. Leah reads from her work and together they discuss meaningful inclusion of disability justice, Intersectional disability, and the nuances and multitudes of the disability experiences. Watch the full event on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UpQVlT2wCQ
AAWW Fave: Breaking Caste (ft. Sujatha Gidla, Neel Mukherjee & Gaiutra Bahadur)
May 06, 2020 04:00 - 1 hour - 71.3 MBWe’re bringing back one of our favorite events from 2018 called Breaking Caste, featuring Sujatha Gidla, Neel Mukherjee, and Gaiutra Bahadur. The episode features a wonderful conversation at the end about Dalit exclusion in the publishing industry, the connection between caste and women’s oppression, Dalit solidarity with Black Americans, and much more. Neel Mukherjee's novel A State of Freedom follows the lives of five characters born to different circumstances in India navigating deeply ...
AAWW Fave: I Can't Go On...I'll Go On ft. Patty Yumi Cottrell, Anelise Chen, Eugene Lim, & Lisa Chen
April 29, 2020 04:30 - 1 hour - 77.1 MBOne of our favorite episodes is this reading and conversation from 2018 with brilliant experimental Asian American writers Anelise Chen, Patty Yumi Cottrell, and Eugene Lim. They read passages from their novels So Many Olympic Exertions, Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, and Dear Cyborgs, all of which have unique perceptions on living and surviving in this difficult world. Following their readings they have an insightful and honest conversation with poet Lisa Chen about protest, immigrant narrativ...
AAWW Fave: Migrant Father Fragment (ft. lê thị diễm thúy, M Zhang, & Hua Hsu)
April 22, 2020 04:30 - 1 hour - 94.6 MBNow that we’ve published over 50 episodes of AAWW Radio, we’re selecting a few of our favorites to republish for our new listeners. One of our earliest episodes is Migrant Father Fragment from 2017 featuring authors lê thị diễm thúy, Q.M. Zhang, and moderated by Hua Hsu. It features wonderful readings of their books The Gangster We Are All Looking For and Accomplice to Memory and an incisive conversation about their writing process and putting memories to paper. Q.M. Zhang and lê thị diễm ...
Finding Your Writing Community (PubCon 2016)
April 15, 2020 04:00 - 43 minutes - 52.7 MBThis episode is the third episode of our podcast series diving back into our 2016 Publishing Conference, which we held at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. The panel we’re sharing this week is titled “Finding Your Community”, featuring Jenny Zhang, Alice Sola Kim, Tony Tulathimutte, and moderated by Jarry Lee. Jenny Zhang is the author of Sour Heart and the recently published My Baby First Birthday-- Alice Sola Kim was a 2016 Whiting award winner and has published in Tin House, The Village ...
Breaking into Speculative Fiction (PubCon 2016 Part 2)
April 08, 2020 04:30 - 50 minutes - 77.1 MBThis episode is the second episode of our podcast series diving back into our 2016 Publishing Conference, which we held at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. The panel we’re sharing this week is titled “Breaking into Speculative Fiction”, featuring Jennifer Marie Brissett, author of the novel Elysium, and the upcoming 2020 novel Destroyer of Light, and Malka Older, author of the Centenal Cycle trilogy, which includes the novels Infomacracy, Null States, and State Tectonics. And last year Malka ...
Finding Your MFA (PubCon 2016 Part 1)
April 01, 2020 04:30 - 37 minutes - 58 MBIn this episode of AAWW Radio, we’re time traveling through our archive, bringing you panel discussions from our 2016 Publishing Conference, which we held at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. The first panel we’re sharing this week is titled “What I Wish I Knew Before I Got My MFA”, featuring Naomi Jackson, author of The Star Side of Bird Hill and who received her MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop-- Karim Dimechkie, author of Lifted by the Great Nothing and who received his MFA at the Michener...
We're back!!
March 25, 2020 04:05 - 2 minutes - 4.19 MBSince our last episode from October on poetry and disappearance in occupied Kashmir, a lot has happened. We've gotten through a long leadership transition and turned our focus inward, to care for AAWW. And earlier this year, we joyfully welcomed our new executive director, Jafreen Uddin. Our staff is currently working from home. We know that it is the strength of our communities that keeps us resilient to help weather the COVID-19 pandemic and confront this difficult time. We also understa...
Occupied Kashmir: Poetry and Disappearance
October 09, 2019 06:54 - 55 minutes - 113 MBHow do you simultaneously disappear people and their hope? Can you keep that hope alive through writing? On this episode of AAWW Radio, we dive into the current blackout of Indian-occupied Kashmir, the history of enforced disappearances that haunts Kashmiris, and how political writing and poetry, like the work of poet Agha Shahid Ali, connects the Kashmiri diaspora to their home. We hear from several people at the forefront of Kashmiri diasporic literature and activism: Ather Zia, Profes...
Ep. 19: Remixing Guantanamo Bay (ft. Phil Metres & Ken Chen)
September 11, 2019 04:30 - 29 minutes - 27.7 MBToday marks the 18th anniversary of 9/11. We're bringing back our episode from April 9th, 2018 called Remixing Guantanamo Bay where former AAWW Executive Director Ken Chen interviews experimental poet Philip Metres. Philip Metres is the author of Sand Opera, the poetry collection that uses redacted texts from Department of Defense manuals for torture sites like Guantanamo Bay to create an aria for the victims of the War on Terror. Solmaz Sharif writes, “Philip Metres’s poetry collection Sand...
Womxn Writers on Motherhood (ft. Tina Chang, T Kira Madden, and Sahar Muradi)
August 07, 2019 04:30 - 1 hour - 114 MBListen to writers Sahar Muradi, T Kira Madden, and Tina Chang read works about mothers and motherhood. Sahar Muradi shares poems about mental health during pregnancy, T Kira Madden reads a scene from her memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, in which her mother tends to her daughter’s lice-infested head, and Tina Chang read from her latest collection Hybrida. AAWW Margins Fellows Pik-Shuen Fung and Jen Lue moderate a Q&A with the writers, who speak about their literary mothers, m...
Writing About Asian & Muslim American Neighborhoods
July 10, 2019 04:30 - 1 hour - 120 MBAAWW’s online magazine Open City documents metropolitan Asian America on the streets of New York City. Every year we grant two fellowships, the Neighborhoods fellowship and the Muslim Communities fellowship, to six writers to cover Asian American & Muslim American communities in New York City. We celebrated the end of our last cohort of Open City Fellows last month with a reading. Writers Mohamad Saleh, Maryam Mir, Syma Mohammed, Hannah Bae, Astha Rajvanshi, and Nora Salem read from piece...
Rewriting the Language of Incarceration (ft. Sarah Wang, Aviva Stahl, Nicole R. Fleetwood, Madhu Kaza, & Daniel A. Gross)
June 25, 2019 04:30 - 1 hour - 124 MBIs language adequate to describe the harsh reality of incarceration? Which words are used too often, too lazily, not often enough? We’ll hear from four people who are writers, journalists, and professors, approaching these subjects surrounding incarceration from different angles; Sarah Wang, Aviva Stahl, Nicole R. Fleetwood, Madhu Kaza. They read and talk with AAWW's Prisons Editor Daniel A. Gross about the evolving language of 2019 and the way it shapes lives, going in-depth on subjects suc...
The Collected Schizophrenias (ft. Esmé Weijun Wang & Larissa Pham)
June 05, 2019 04:30 - 1 hour - 83.8 MBWe hosted a reading and conversation with novelist Esmé Weijun Wang, author of the New York Times-bestselling new essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias. She was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and has won a Whiting Award. The Collected Schizophrenias, which won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, is, as NPR writes, “riveting, honest, and courageously allows for complexities in the reality of what living with illness is like.” After reading from her work, Esmé has a c...
Poetry Vs. Community Vs. History
May 22, 2019 04:30 - 1 hour - 99.7 MBFor Asian American poets, what is the relationship between bearing witness to history and giving voice to marginalized communities? At the 2019 AWP Conference and Bookfair held in Portland in March, AAWW hosted a panel titled Poets vs. Community vs. History, moderated by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello with E.J. Koh, Yanyi, Emily Jungmin Yoon, & Monica Sok. These multidisciplinary writers talk about how their work as poets, editors, translators, and scholars allows them to uncover intimacies a...
Vietnamese Ghost Stories (ft. Thanhha Lai, Vu Tran, Violet Kupersmith, & Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis)
May 08, 2019 04:00 - 33 minutes - 60.6 MBIn March, we co-presented a series of conversations with DVAN, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network. For this podcast we’ll be listening to an introduction by DVAN founder and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer Viet Than Nguyen. Following this is a conversation around the concept of Vietnamese ghost stories moderated by Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis and featuring authors Violet Kupersmith, Thanhha Lai, & Vu Tran. The order they’re listed here is the same order they answ...
Pachinko (ft. Min Jin Lee & Ken Chen)
March 13, 2019 04:30 - 1 hour - 106 MBWe're featuring audio from a 2017 event collaboration with the Tenement Museum. We celebrated the launch of author Min Jin Lee’s second novel Pachinko, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 2017 and National Book Award Finalist. Pachinko follows one Korean family through generations. The story begins in Korea in the early 1900s and then moves to Japan. The family endures harsh discrimination, catastrophe, and poverty. They also encounter joy as they rise to meet the challenges their new...
Insurrecto & Filipinx Resistance ft. Gina Apostol & Sabina Murray
February 27, 2019 05:30 - 1 hour - 120 MBGina Apostol’s latest work of fiction, Insurrecto, is a tour de force about about the Philippines’ past and present told through rivaling scripts from an American filmmaker and her Filipino translator. The book was one of the New York Times’ Editor’s Choices for 2018 and won comparisons to Nabokov and Borges for its kaleidoscopic structure. With her trademark wit, uncommon humor, layering of forgotten histories and dueling narratives, Gina tells the story of the atrocities that faced Filipin...
Subjects of Interest (ft. Kamila Shamsie, Hirsh Sawhney, & Rozina Ali)
February 13, 2019 05:30 - 1 hour - 67.4 MBIn 2017, we hosted novelists Kamila Shamsie and Hirsh Sawhney, both writers who released new novels about South Asian families fractured in the diaspora. Kamila Shamsie’s novel Home Fire takes Sophocles’s classic tragedy Antigone as the starting point for her novel about political tensions in the War on Terror and the way it impacts Muslim families in the West. Hirsh Sawhney’s debut novel South Haven illustrates how grief complicates and splinters intimacy in an Indian-American family. The...
Queer South Asian Literature (ft. SJ Sindu, Rahul Mehta, & Sreshtha Sen)
January 30, 2019 16:50 - 1 hour - 69.9 MBWe're featuring writers Rahul Mehta and SJ Sindu who read from debut novels No Other World and Marriage of a Thousand Lies featuring complex queer South Asian characters. They have a conversation with writer and Shoreline Review editor Sreshtha Sen about writing transnational narratives, how cultural trauma affects what we write, and resisting the common coming out story. How do you come out to family members whose language you don’t speak?
You Don't Say No To Yuri Kochiyama (ft. Fred Ho, Diane C. Fujino, Baba Herman Ferguson, Esperanza Martell, Laura Whitehorn)
January 09, 2019 05:30 - 1 hour - 74.2 MBWe’re reaching back over a decade into our archives to 2005, when Diane C. Fujino released Yuri Kochiyama's biography Heartbeat of Struggle. To celebrate the book's release, activist and saxophonist Fred Ho invited Yuri's friends & contemporaries Baba Herman Ferguson, Esperanza Martell, & Laura Whitehorn to our space to speak on Yuri Kochiyama's legacy as a radical Asian American political activist. Afterwards Diane C. Fujino talks about Yuri Kochiyama's political awakening from her early ye...