Photo: Poet Srikanth Reddy and novelist Ed Lin exemplify the diversity in the Asian American writing community and at a recent Asian American literature symposium. Photo by Kira Wisniewski.

Eight amazing Asian American writers gathered at the University of Maryland this past Saturday to read their work and talk about the state of Asian American literature. Kira Wisniewski of 826DC was on the scene for Hyphen to report on the day-long festivities:  

Entries are pouring in for the 2010 Asian American Short Story Contest, brought to you by Hyphen and the Asian American Writers' Workshop, but we want more! So, we've decided to extend the deadline until Monday April 12th (postmark deadline), so you can get that story in and maybe even win $1000!

Check out all the details here.

Here are a few FAQs we've been encountering:

Over the last several years, I’ve made it my point on this blog to assess the South Asian American aspects of the SFIAAFF: the good, the bad and the Bollywood. While the festival always has an amazing range of films and stories from global South Asia – it is the South Asian American stories that I find missing.

Exciting news everyone: A new literary journal dedicated to Asian American writing -- the Asian American Literary Review (AALR) -- is mere months away from hitting the stands. As a writer, I think that the pulse of American writing is found in its literary journals. Sure, they may not be as sexy as The New Yorker, or even get top billing at bookstores, as Stephen King wrote about a few years ago, but it's the place where you find the real writing, both from established writers and emerging ones. Even in this hyper-connected world, journals continue to be a place where literary arts can be both showcased and discussed with abandon. My very first creative publication was in the pages of the Asian Pacific American Journal, the literary journal of the Asian American Writers' Workshop, back in 1998. I remember how exciting it was to have my poem be a part of this collection of writings from Asian Americans all over the country. Now, the AALR hopes to create these kind of creative connections for a whole new era of Asian American literature.   

There's nothing like starting off the new year with a fat pile of books by your side. Here's a round-up of the year's best Asian American books to help keep you warm until the Spring.

When the Hyphen editorial team discovered that Amy Tan was the recipient of the third annual Litquake Barbary Coast Award for contribution to the Bay Area literary community, there was a flurry of confused emails: What exactly was this award and why did Amy Tan deserve to win it?

Hyphen's Family Issue (#17) release party definitely signified that summer was here with two rooms of music and performers galore at 111 Minna Gallery last Friday. Plus, it featured the debut of Hyphen's baby line -- including onesies and bibs -- which quickly became the fashion accessory of the night.

Sung Woo's debut book of interwoven short stories Everything Asian (Thomas Dunne Books) is set mostly in East Meets West, an Asian gift shop located in a strip mall in New Jersey during the 1980s, and concerns a Korean immigrant family trying to acculturate and get reacquainted with their father/husband -- who had already been in the US for five years. We asked Woo -- a former literature section contributor to Hyphen -- to subject himself to our set of literary questions.

Thaddeus Rutkowski's novel Roughhouse (Kaya Press)
has been described as "in-your-face punk realism with touches
of the surreal and subversive black humor."
His second novel, Tetched, takes the experimental form of "fractals" --
or chapters composed of several paragraph-sized vignettes.
We asked the New York-based writer to subject himself to
our set of literary questions. [See Rutkowski read at Eastwind Books of  Berkeley, Saturday April 4th at 7 p.m.]

I've been following the supposed demise of the mainstream publishing world pretty closely. What wannabe writer isn't? Is it the Kindle or Amazon or huge advances or just that no one reads anymore? Whatever it is, I'm trying to adapt my daydreams about my forthcoming beautifully-designed hardback book and world tour to perhaps a new reality ... one that involves selling electronic chapbooks out of the trunk of my electric car.

But in the meantime, the success of two Bay Area-based Asian American writers -- Minal Hajratwala and Yiyun Li -- has been buoying my dismal thoughts with the release of their latest books. 

The Slumdog Millionaire phenomenon has been an interesting one. For me, the best part has been the 'Fuck You' to the Hollywood establishment that this film represented: no stars, no backing, etc. I'm not sure if it was my favorite Oscar winning movie -- or my favorite movie of the year for that matter [because, um, did you SEE The Wrestler? and I'm not really a feel-good kinda girl]. But it has also elicited some really interesting responses. Here's a quick wrap up of blog entries and pieces:

I am giddy with excitement because we are almost ready to announce the winner of the second Hyphen and Asian American Writers' Workshop short story contest! The judges will get back to us with their final decisions this week. Eee! In the meantime, I found two interesting posts by Asian American
writers this week on writing and revision.

With Slumdog Millionaire sweeping the box office AND the Golden Globes, I guess South Asians are in line to be the ethnicity du jour again in 2009. Of course, I thought the movie was wildly entertaining, and gave a City of God glamour to the slums of Mumbai. (Suck this, City of Joy.) And seeing Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan make an 11th hour appearance to present really made it seem like Indian film had arrived.

But my champagne-fueled, Desi pride just couldn't get it up to full joy because where were the Asian Americans? But forget that even, where were the black people?

In the past week, I rented both the Academy Award-winning The Times of Harvey Milk and went to see Gus Van Sant's Milk at The Castro Theater. As much as I loved Milk (and felt so lucky to watch it in the Castro Theater), I think the documentary is an amazing piece of work that tells a more complete story, especially when it comes to Harvey Milk's connection and dedication to the Asian American community. 

Great news for you undiscovered fiction writers out there: the Hyphen and Asian American Writers' Workshop Short Story contest deadline has been extended to Monday Sept. 29th, 2008. So, dust off that typewriter and polish up that story from that writing workshop in college ... you have a few more months to let the creativity flow.

Stephen Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" had a profound effect on my life, as it did for any South Asian kid who grew up in the 1980s. I was both entranced and dismayed by the Hollywood blockbuster that actually showed Indian people on screen in major roles, but then turned us into eyeball soup-eating, heart-extracting zombie thugee cult members. And in the end it was the British who helped save Dr. Jones from the savage natives. But I didn't really think about the post-colonial aspects until years later; it was the persistence of the eyeball soup and monkey brains that haunted my childhood. Yet, my brother and I watched the movie over and over and I can recite most of the lines. And whatever happened to Short Round?

It's so cool to see a subtle increase in stories about Asian Americans this month. This NY Times video on Minnesota Hmong American poet/rapper Tou Saiko Lee is pretty dope. I was especially interested in the end when he talks about performing with his grandmother: She busts a flow in ancient Hmong poetry and then he starts rapping with her. Have people seen any other subtle Asian Pacific American Heritage Month coverage that they're into?