The First Annual Asian American Literary Awards Ceremony

Come to the Asian American literary event of the year!
Tickets are going fast!

Contact:
Jeannie Wong or Michelle Yung
@The Asian American Writers' Workshop, (212) 228-6718

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The First Annual Asian American Literary Awards Ceremony
Date: Monday, November 16, 1998
Time: 7:00 pm VIP Cocktail Hour, 8:00 pm Awards Ceremony
Where: The Joseph Papp Public Theater 425 Lafayette Street (between East 4th Street and Astor Place)

Cost: $30 VIP, $15 general admission, $10 students and AAWW members

Recipients:
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Lois-Ann Yamanaka

Hosts:
Jessica Hagedorn
David Henry Hwang

Presenter:
Luis Francia

Readings:
Lawrence Chua
Indira Ganesan
Timothy Liu

The Asian American Writers' Workshop recognizes excellence in literature by Asian American authors. The First Annual Asian American Literary Awards Ceremony will be held on Monday, November 16, 1998 at The Joseph Papp Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street (between East 4th Street and Astor Place). The awards ceremony will begin at 8:00 pm, preceded by a Cocktail Hour at 7:00 pm for VIP guests, award recipients and presenters. The cost of admission is as follows: $30 VIP which includes the Cocktail Hour and preferred seating for the Awards Ceremony, $15 general admission and $10 for students with ID and AAWW members.

Hosted by acclaimed playwright David Henry Hwang and award-winning author Jessica Hagedorn, The First Annual Asian American Literary Awards will be honoring poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge for her poetry collection, Endocrinology (Kelsey Street, 1997), and Lois-Ann Yamanaka for her novel, Blu's Hanging (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1997). Readings from Berssenbrugge and Yamanaka will follow acceptance speeches.

Additional readings will be given by Asian American authors published in 1998: Lawrence Chua, author of Gold By The Inch (Grove Press, 1998), Indira Ganesan, author of Inheritance (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), and Timothy Liu, author of Say Goodnight (Copper Canyon, 1998).

Presenting the Best Poetry Award to Mei-mei Berssenbrugge will be author Luis Francia. Jessica Hagedorn will present the Best Fiction Award to Lois-Ann Yamanaka. The First Annual Asian American Literary Awards Ceremony is hosted by The Joseph Papp Public Theater. All proceeds will benefit The Asian American Writers' Workshop.

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HOW TO GET TICKETS

Go to our website, print the order form, and send it in with payment or....

Send your name, address and phone.

CREDIT CARD ORDERS++++++++++++++++++++

Please call AAWW at (212) 228-6718, Monday - Saturday from 12 noon to 7:00pm Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express

Please include expiration dates.

Or fax credit card orders to (212) 228-7718.

CHECKS ++++++++++++++++++++

Please send checks, denoting how many tickets and whether they are VIP, to:

The First Annual Asian American Literary Awards
Asian American Writers' Workshop
37 St. Mark,s Place, Ste. B
New York, NY 10003

Students must send a copy of their current student ID in order to get student rate. AAWW members, please denote membership on the check.

NO ORDERS WILL BE ACCEPTED THROUGH E-MAIL
NO RESERVATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED.

All tickets are on a first-come-first-serve basis. Ticket confirmations will be done by telephone.

Tickets will not be sent to you. All tickets will all be held under your name at the door of the theater.

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BIOS

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing, China and grew up in Massachusetts. Her books include The Heat Bird, (Burning Deck) and Random Possession (I. Reed Books), both of which received American Book Awards; Empathy (Station Hill Press), which received a PEN West Award; Sphericity (Kelsey St. Press); and Endocrinology in collaboration with Kiki Smith (Kelsey St. Press), which was nominated as a finalist for the 1998 Independent Small Press Book Award for Poetry. Berssenbrugge has taught at Brown University, Naropa and the Institute of American Indian Art. She lives in New Mexico and in New York City.

Lawrence Chua's writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Nation, Vibe, Artforum and many other publications. He edited the anthology Collapsing New Buildings (Kaya Productions) and has been the recipient of several fellowships, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundations for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. His first novel, Gold By The Inch, was released by GrovePress in 1998.

Luis Francia, coeditor of the AAWW's anthology Flippin': Filipinos on America, is a New Yorker, a Manileno, a poet, critic and teacher. He has written two books of poetry, Her Beauty Likes Me Well (with David Friedman) and The Arctic Archipelago and Other Poems. He edited the seminal Brown River, White Ocean (Rutgers University Press, 1993), an anthology of Philippine literature in English. A Palanca Memorial Award winner in poetry, he has had his work published in numerous literary journals and was writer-in-residence at Columbia University and at Asian CineVision. He writes for The Village Voice, A. Magazine and Asiaweek, and teaches Asian American literature at Sarah Lawrence College. His latest book, Memories of Overdevelopment, was released by Anvil Press in 1998.

Indira Ganesan was born in Srirangam, India, and moved to the United States when she was in grammar school. She graduated from Vassar College and received an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is on the faculty of the English Department at Southampton College on Long Island, and is a 1997-98 Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe College. Her first novel was The Journey, and she was a Granta Best Young American Novelist Award finalist. Her second novel, Inheritance, was released by Alfred A. Knopf in 1998.

Jessica Hagedorn's first novel Dogeaters (Pantheon Books, 1990), was nominated for a National Book Award in 1990 and was voted the best book of the year by the Before Columbus Foundation. A well-known performance artist, poet and playwright, and formerly a commentator on "Crossroads," a syndicated weekly magazine on National Public Radio, she is also the author of Danger and Beauty: Poetry and Prose, as well as the editor of Charlie Chan is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction (Penguin, 1993). Her new novel Gangster of Love (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996) was nominated for the Irish Times International Fiction Prize. She lives in New York City.

David Henry Hwang, internationally known for the critically acclaimed and Tony award-winning M. Butterfly, is the first Asian American playwright on Broadway. Other plays penned by Hwang include FOB (1981 OBIE Award), The Dance And The Railroad, Family Devotions and Sound And Beauty. Hwang serves on the boards of Dramatists Guild, TCG and the China Institute, and was appointed to the President's Committee on the Arts & Humanities. Hwang received a 1997 OBIE Award for the premiere of Golden Child at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre, which moved to Broadway in Spring 1998.

Timothy Liu was born and raised in San Jose, California by immigrant parents from mainland China. He received his M.A. in creative writing from the University of Houston, and his thesis, Vox Angelica (Alice James Books, 1992), subsequently received the 1992 Norma Ferber First Book Award from the poetry society of America. His second book, Burnt Offerings (Copper Canyon Press, 1995), was a 1995 Lambda Literature Award Finalist. A new book, Say Goodnight, has just been published by Copper Canyon Press in 1998. His poems and papers have been acquired by the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, and he has taught poetry workshops at such places as Hampshire College, Cornell and UC Berkeley, where he served as the 1997 Holloway Lecturer. He is currently as assistant professor at William Paterson University and lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Lois-Ann Yamanaka is the author of Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1997) and Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre (Bamboo Ridge Press, 1993). She was born in Ho'olehua, on the island of Moloka'i, and lives in Honolulu with her husband and son. Blu's Hanging was released by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1997.

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