AAWW is proud to offer two fellowships for emerging NYC-based Asian American writers. The Open City Fellowship gives writers the opportunity to write narrative nonfiction on the vibrant immigrant communities of New York City. The Margins Fellowship is an opportunity for four emerging creative writers, aged thirty and under, to establish a home for their writing as they make progress on a book-length work.

Open City Fellowship

Open City documents the pulse of metropolitan Asian America as it’s being lived on the streets of New York right now. We’re looking for writers to create deft, engaging narratives that bring the face, name, place, and heart of the community to issues like gentrification, labor, and community policing in neighborhoods such as Sunset Park in Brooklyn, Manhattan’s Chinatown, and Flushing, Jackson Heights, and Richmond Hill in Queens.



Sania Ahmed In 2015, Open City Fellow Chaya Babu wrote about Bangladeshi organizers in Kensington speaking out against injustice in Bangladesh. Pictured here is organizer Shahana Hanif.

Fellows receive a $2,500 grant, skill-building workshops, and publishing opportunities as part of two nine-month fellowship opportunities: The Open City Neighborhoods Fellowship and the Open City Muslim Communities Fellowship.

The Margins Fellowship

The Margins is our online magazine of arts and ideas. We seek to bridge the allegedly contradictory worlds of literary thought and social justice, pop culture, and critical theory while engaging with immigration, race, and transnationalism.

The Margins Fellowship grants a $5,000 fellowship, mentorship, work space, career guidance, and publishing opportunities to four Asian diasporic creative writers based in NYC for a full year. Fellows also receive special residency space at The Millay Colony for the Arts, a seven-acre artists retreat space at the former house and gardens of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Read our FAQ before you apply to the 2021 Margins Fellowship.

AAWW 2016-2017 Margins Fellow Jen Hyde.

The Van Lier Fellowship was AAWW’s first fellowship program and was awarded from 1993 to 2005. Given to emerging creative writers of color aged thirty and under, the Van Lier Fellowship supported many Asian American writers at the beginning of their careers, including Cathy Park Hong, Monique Truong, Ava Chin and Tina Chang.

