The Asian American Writers' Workshop is the preeminent national arts nonprofit dedicated to the belief that Asian American stories deserve to be told. Our fundamental mission is oriented around helping the Asian American community speak its voice and creating a safe forum for readers to interact with activists and thinkers. We are building the Asian literary culture of tomorrow through our curatorial platform comprised of our events series and online editorial initiatives. In 2011, we hosted 200+ writers at 50+ events, significantly more than groups with several times our budget. We hosted PAGE TURNER, our literary festival which last year featured 80 artists. Last year, we launched three magazines—The Margins, Open City and CultureStrike—dedicated to redefining what it means to be both an American and global citizen. They represent a structural platform for literary experiences that spans the global/diasporic (The Margins) to the nationwide frontlines of immigration (CultureStrike) to regional voices direct from Asian American New York communities (Open City).
These three online magazines have been covered in the New York Observer, Longreads, Curbed, the Village Voice, Eater, and the Wall Street Journal print edition, which devoted a half-page story to our launch party, which attracted more than 1,000 people. In the last year, we published more than 200 stories on The Margins, CultureStrike and Open City, as well as another 115 stories from OurChinatown. We attracted 60,000 unique visitors in just the first three months of our launch—an astonishing number for a fledgling publication. The readership is national: nearly half the hits came from readers outside of New York City, including 15% from the South and Midwest. Named one of the top five Asian American groups nationally, covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Poets & Writers, we're an indispensable national forum at the intersection of anti-racism and literature. And we're inventing the future of Asian American culture.
