Author Q&A: Kara H.L. Chen and “Love & Resistance,” “Asking for a Friend”

We're so honored to share this interview between two of our literary champions. Tiffany is a Taiwanese American book blogger and co-founder of Subtle Asian Book Club (SABC), an international book club with 15,000+ members dedicated to amplifying Asian storytellers. She is a passionate advocate for the accessibility and readership of Asian American literature and uses her platform to combat anti-AAPI hate and support the flourishing of Asian communities worldwide. We knew she would facilitate an astute…

Gathering Taiwanese American Writers at AWP 2024: “I wish I had this community growing up.”

On Lunar New Year’s eve, we again gathered an expanding cohort of Taiwanese American changemakers in the literary world who’d convened in Kansas City for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference (AWP). Our Year of the Dragon dinner was hosted at Chewology, led by recently James Beard semifinalist nominated-chef Katie Liu-Sung. We were touched by Katie's vision to bring Taiwan to Kansas City, where there are relatively fewer Asian Americans compared to coastal enclaves.…

Author Q&A: Yi Shun Lai and “A Suffragist’s Guide to the Antarctic”

I was so pleased to read an advance copy of Yi Shun Lai's forthcoming A SUFFRAGIST'S GUIDE TO THE ANTARCTIC, a young adult novel constructed as the diary entries of Clara Ketterling-Dunbar, who has somehow maneuvered her way into an otherwise all-male Antarctic expedition. None of the other crew members know the full truth about Clara: that she is just eighteen and American, or that she'd been an outspoken suffragist with the Women's Social & Political Union. Still, they are wary of her,…

Now accepting submissions: 2024 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes celebrate Taiwanese American student and adult writers

  TaiwaneseAmerican.org is pleased to announce the 2024 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes. Created in 2021 in collaboration with Taiwanese American author Charles Yu, the Prizes are intended to encourage and recognize creative literary work by Taiwanese American students, and to foster discussion and community around such work. In 2022, the prize expanded to include a separate middle school category for 6th-8th grade applicants, judged by Alvina Ling. In 2023, we added…

(Mostly Unserious) Reality Index for The Brothers Sun

Mostly Unserious Reality Index for Netflix’s The Brothers Sun Netflix’s The Brothers Sun is excellently written, acted and produced. More than just funny and entertaining, the show insightfully depicts trans-Pacific intergenerational relationships, Taiwanese American culture, and SoCal Asian American life. Though most of us have no experience in the criminal underworld and we obviously know the series is meant as entertainment, people have also been commenting on the series’ believability…

History Lessons from Netflix’s “The Brothers Sun”

“Without history… none of it has meaning.” If there is any singular detail of Taiwanese American creative work that I hyper-fixate on, it is the conflation of “Chinese” and “Taiwanese” identity. At its most egregious, converging Taiwanese and Chinese identity is an ongoing tactic by the Chinese Communist Party to erase Taiwan’s distinct identity and history. For decades now, the CCP has actively coerced corporations, academic institutions, and creatives to label Taiwan as a province…

Betelnut, Soldier-Wolf 檳榔,兵狼: Fiction by YakuzaBaby

Grand Prize Winner, Middle School Category Betelnut, Soldier-Wolf: 檳榔,兵狼  Echo sat on the edge of the cracked leather seat, clipping a curler into her bangs. What the hell was she doing in this dingy-ass store, every surface plastered with slippery tiles in dire need of grouting, a flickering neon sign out front with the words 檳榔 五十年老店 and a drawing of a clawed hand faded into it. Though she could not read the words, she found the strange hand amusing. Her phone vibrated…

“One Order of Dan Bing, Please”: Creative Non-Fiction by Tristan Tang

Grand Prize Winner, High School Category 老闆, 我要一份蛋餅!  Summers in Taiwan are brutal. I mean, think of the thrashing Da’an heat, cooking you alive like a fried egg from a breakfast shop. Or picture an army of mosquitoes, all nosediving towards you with their suckers out, ready to unleash an unrelenting week of itchiness.  Buzz.  The irritating sound made me sigh.  A mosquito flew in circles around my ear, taunting me for not killing it before it’d injected its…

Gravitational Pull: Fiction by Susan L. Lin

Honorable Mention, Adult Category In one of my earliest memories, my sister Lulu lies facedown on the living room sofa while our mother leans over her prone body, liberally applying a topical medication behind her ears. The skin there is puffy and raw, an open wound. “Your zǐzǐ pointed at the moon, and look what happened,” our mother says to me, though her gaze never strays from the task at hand. “Now you will know never to do the same.” Lulu whimpers into the seat cushion, and when…

Salty Like Tears: Creative Nonfiction by Grace Hwang Lynch

Grand Prize Winner, Adult Category March is the rainiest month in Taiwan. Not the afternoon cloudbursts of a tropical summer, nor the furious monsoons of early fall; in the time between winter and spring, the sky is a steady  stream of black. But this was the period when the boys and I could spend some extended time on the island. During that first family trip to Taiwan when the boys were seven and ten, the kids and  I stayed in Taipei after my husband flew back to the states for work. My job…