Awards

Lifetime Achievement Award

Legendary literary figure Ajai Singh "Sonny" Mehta, chairman and editor-in-chief of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, has been named the 2009 winner of The Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Described in The New York Times as "one of the greatest editors of all time," Mehta has remarked, "I think publishing as an activity should really be seeking danger, not running from it." Born in India, educated at Cambridge, and working in New York, Mehta has shepherded books by such Nobel Prize-winning authors as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, V.S. Naipaul, and Toni Morrison. Just last year, The New York Times released its rankings of the top ten books of 2008--seven of which were Knopf books, including Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, the winner of the Twelfth Annual Asian American Literary Award in Fiction. Knopf's other Asian American authors include Tania James, Gish Jen, Maxine Hong Kingston, David Wong Louie, Suketu Mehta, Katherine Min, and Michael Ondaatje, who will join the Workshop in honoring Mehta on November 13th.

Click here to buy tickets to our Awards cocktail reception and dinner with Mehta and Ondaatje.

Twelfth Annual Asian American Literary Awards

"Over the past decade, the Workshop's Asian American Literary Award has become the nation's leading honor for Asian American literature, recognizing the accomplishments of today's writers -- as well as emerging writers."

- Sally Kim, Executive Editor, HarperCollins

Since 1998, The Annual Asian American Literary Awards have honored Asian American writers for excellence in fiction, poetry and nonfiction. With novels by Asian Americans making up less than one percent of the novels being published, the Awards has highlighted those writers who may have otherwise gone unrecognized. The award has helped to propel the careers of many authors like Susan Choi, finalist of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize, and Chang-rae Lee, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award. Literary award recipients are carefully selected by an independent, national panel of judges including writers, journalists, editors and academics--all of whom were selected based on their expertise in a literary genre and/or experience in academic environments relevant to Asian American literature. Learn about past winners here.

The Asian American Literary Award in Fiction

The winner of the Twelfth Annual Asian American Literary Award in Fiction is Jhumpa Lahiri for her short story collection Unaccustomed Earth. The two finalists are Amitav Ghosh for Sea of Poppies and Ed Park for Personal Days. To buy tickets to our awards ceremony, click here.

The Award was judged by William Morris Endeavor Agent Kirby Kim, novelist Thaddeus Rutkowski, and Boston College Professor Min Hyoung Song. Want to learn more about these books? Feel free to review the judge's citations of these three books here.

The Asian American Literary Award in Poetry

The winner of the Twelfth Annual Asian American Literary Award in Poetry is Sesshu Foster for his collection World Ball Notebook. The two finalists are Monica Ferrell for Beasts for the Chase and Jeffrey Yang for An Aquarium. To buy tickets to our awards ceremony, click here.

The Award was judged by poet Cathy Park Hong, Stanford University Professor Stephen Hong Sohn, and Williams College Professor Dorothy Wang. Want to learn more about these books? Feel free to review the judge's citations of these three books here.

The Asian American Literary Award in Nonfiction

The winner of the Twelfth Annual Asian American Literary Award in Nonfiction is Leslie T. Chang for her book Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China. The two finalists are Kao Kalia Yang for The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir and Kavitha Rajagopalan for Muslims of The Metropolis: The Stories of Three Immigrant Families in the West. To buy tickets to our awards ceremony, click here.

The Award was judged by New Press Editor Sarah Fan, Mitra Kalita, author of Suburban Sahibs, and journalist Deepti Hajela. Want to learn more about these books? Feel free to review the judge's citations of these three books here.