November 12, 2007

My Dear Friends,

I am leaving the Workshop. I have had a wonderful 8+ years and I cannot decide if they have been long or short.

It doesn't matter, really. You have made my time here so enriching and revelatory that it is hard for me to imagine another job - don't really have one lined up, yet - where the exchanges and even the daily mail will be as interesting.

Working at the Workshop has made it challenging for me to write. Editing a manuscript, offering feedback on book titles, brokering a relationship between writer and agent, attending community events, telling a stalled writer she's good enough to keep going, handwriting notes forever, recommending writers for awards, dreaming of events, standing up in high school auditoriums, touring through college campuses - as creative as these acts are, I was a little too exhausted when I got home to spill my own ink.

All writers probably experience things that inhibit their own progress. I remember visiting a writer at her home in Boston and I told her she had the cleanest bathtub I had ever seen. And I looked at her hands and she looked back at me and we just knew - all that scrubbing when she could have been writing.

Since I made the decision to step down, I have felt a great, exhilarating sensation for the Workshop. True - I personally will miss my colleagues and friends and the positive energy of the loft. But I always think that a small arts organization should turn over in leadership in a carefully planned way at the right time and veer off in a new direction.

And here is where you can help: the Board and I would like to make the transition into new leadership in 2008 with a bit of money in the bank for the new boss. The Workshop is financially stable, exciting in every way and poised for greater greatness. The executive director position is a great post and our hope, my last plea, is for you to make a jumbo contribution to ensure a smooth, loving transition. Please donate all that you can. Some of you don't even read fiction - but just enjoy the idea of an organization like ours. Since you won't hear from me again, why not send off a nice final donation?

Never good to end on money, so how about this: I ran into artist Richard Tuttle on the street last month, and he told me that his poet-wife Mei-mei Berssenbrugge pictured me caught between two spaces, trying to minimize the weirdness caused by both - and that I would not stay there much longer. Even though I think they are both psychic, I also think that I must have been giving off this vibe that it was time to pass on to something else for my own sake.

You have been amazing, and we have been amazing together. I really do hope to hear from you once more.

Much love and gratitude,

Quang Bao
Executive Director

p.s. Please substantiate the rumors of my imminent departure by making a tax-deductible contribution using one of the methods below!

Three ways to donate to the Workshop:

1) Using your credit card on our secure online donation system

2) To make a gift by mail, please dowload the PDF and send it with your check to:

The Asian American Writers' Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, Suite 10A
New York NY 10001

3) Phone in your donation by calling us at 212.494.0061

Thanks in advance for supporting the Workshop!

Your donation is tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law. We will send you appropriate acknowledgement by mail.

The programs of The Asian American Writers' Workshop are supported by ABC, The Asian Women Giving Circle, The C.J. Huang Foundation, The Edward & Sally Van Lier Fund of the NY Community Trust, The Jerome Foundation, The Lila Acheson Wallace Theater Fund of the NY Community Trust, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Newman's Own Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts, The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York Foundation for the Arts, The Ford Foundation, The Ong Family Foundation, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Union Square Awards of the Tides Foundation, Lee Anav Chung, and the generosity of our individual donors.