Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) first took shape in 1991 in a Greek diner in New York City’s East Village. AAWW’s co-founders Curtis Chin, Christina Chiu, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, and Bino A. Realuyo began meeting with other Asian American writers, all of whom were in search of a supportive community in the New York City literary world for writers of color. Together, they established AAWW as a not-for-profit organization in 1992 and published the first issue of The Asian Pacific American Journal, AAWW’s first print publication.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
The Margins - Online Magazine
The Margins is our award-winning magazine of literature, arts, and ideas, dedicated to inventing the Asian American creative culture of tomorrow. As the editorial arm of AAWW, it draws upon a commitment to social justice to imagine a vibrant, nuanced, multiracial, and transnational Asian America. The Margins is visited by an average of 3,000 people weekly, and has received over a million views since its launch in 2012.
Where we work
External reviews

Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Total number of audience members
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Total number of attendees each year to our in-person and virtual reading series in NYC.
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
The Asian American Writers’ Workshop works every day to empower and amplify marginalized voices. Since our founding in 1991, we have been dedicated to the belief that Asian American stories deserve to be told. At a time when migrants, women, people of color, Muslims, and LGBTQ people are specifically targeted, we offer a new countercultural public space in which to imagine a more just future.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
We achieve our goals by:
(1) Building an inclusive pipeline
(2) Nurturing a new generation of Asian diasporic writers
(3) Creating a sanctuary space for the imagination
(4) Taking stories from the margins and pushing them to the center
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
The AAWW is the nation's preeminent organization in amplifying marginalized voices. We are a publisher, an incubator for emerging writers, a sanctuary space for readers and ideas. We are a community of activists who use our artistry to advocate for and center the voices and ideas on the margins. Our public space is designed for gathering communities and building critical dialogue between literature and movement culture.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
FELLOWSHIPS
In January 2020, we welcomed a new cohort of five Open City Fellows, who have begun their nine-month fellowship writing on Asian and Muslim immigrant communities across NYC. We also welcomed a new cohort of four Margins Fellows who are at work on book-length works of fiction, poetry, narrative nonfiction. Fellows' projects include a family history that also investigates conflicts over land and sovereignty in Martha's Vineyard; a collection of “reversible poems,” drawing on the centuries-old tradition in Chinese poetry to examine the circularity of melancholy and migration; a novel that explores the meeting points of immigration, political ambition, love, and violence; and a project that chronicles on writer's journey as a survivor of abuse, a teen parent, a witness testifying for a criminal trial, and an inpatient in psychiatric units.
MAGAZINE
Our online magazine The Margins was awarded a 2019 Whiting Foundation Literary Magazine Prize, which recognizes literary magazines that publish extraordinary writing with verve and flair, support talented writers on the page and in the world, connect with readers, and advance the literary community. The judges' citation for the award reads: “An indispensable incubator for audacious intellect and human complexity, The Margins reshapes literature even as it creates space for nuance, voice, imagination, and connection. As an institution, it has a profound impact on our cultural consciousness: the legion of writers The Margins has nurtured redefines our understanding of what it is to be Asian American in this country, and in the world.”
Since July 2019, we have published 145 pieces on The Margins, including essays by Adiba Talukder, Julia Shiota, Julian Saporiti, and Nina Sharma; interviews with Ishmael Reed, Monique Truong, E.J. Koh, and Poupeh Missaghi; poems by Khaty Xiong, Jess Rizkallah, Michael Prior, and Sham-e-Ali Nayeem; fiction by Bishakh Som and Ji Hyun Joo; and more.
PUBLIC PROGRAMMING
From July 2019 through February 2020, we hosted 27 live events in our performance space in New York City, including five editions of our open mic Mouth to Mouth series. In March 2020, we made the difficult decision to cancel all live programming and close our public space indefinitely in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, we have shifted to a more robust slate of digital programming and virtual readings.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Asian American Writers Workshop Inc
Board of directorsas of 4/6/2021
Anne Ishii
Jin Auh
Manan Ahmed
Mariko Gordon
Jennifer Hayashida
Hua Hsu
Kirby Kim
Jennifer 8. Lee
Tan Lin
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? GuideStar partnered on this section with CHANGE Philanthropy and Equity in the Center.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
No data
Gender identity
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Sexual orientation
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Disability
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