The Workshop prides itself on being a safe, nurturing space for writers of all levels and ethnicities to develop artistically and professionally. Novelists Min Jin Lee, Ed Lin and Monique Truong first began to find their ways as writers via our writing workshops and literary enrichment programs. Our writing workshops are affordable and intimate, a space where one builds friendships that often last longer than the duration of the class. Former Poet Laureate of Queens, Ishle Yi Park has said, "The Workshop nurtured and raised me. A home away from home, a nest, a gathering place, a refuge, a resource. Word."

(1) If you're interested in signing up for a writing workshop, you can do so either at the website for that specific workshop (see right) or by calling us at (212) 494.0061. We want you to be able to try out a class to see if you like it so your credit card will be charged a non-refundable deposit for the first class only. (For one-day sessions you will pay the full price of the session.) Unless otherwise noted, workshops are at The Asian American Writers' Workshop, 110-112 W. 27th St, Ste. 600, New York, NY 10001.

(2) Assuming you like the class we'll then charge you for the remainder of the fee for the course.

In either case receipts will be given to you at the second session. Should you decide to drop the class please notify us via telephone by 7PM on the business day following the first class. There are no refunds for classes missed voluntarily. We hope you enjoy the class!

In this six-week workshop we will use fun exercises to make things happen in your fiction. You will learn to invent scenes that are turning points, that push the story into new and exciting places and reveal character. We will work on techniques that balance action with thought, increase tension and deliver an emotional reward to the reader. Through class readings, exercises and shared work you will leave the class with a sharper sense of narrative craft and enough material for a bang-up short story or novel chapter.

Suitable for all levels.

Meera Nair’s debut collection, Video (Pantheon), won the Asian American Literary Award and was chosen as Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post. Her work has appeared in the New York Times magazine, on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts and in various anthologies. She has an MFA from NYU and teaches fiction at Brooklyn College and NYU.

@The Asian American Writers' Workshop
110-112 West 27th Street, 6th Floor
Between 6th and 7th Avenues
Buzzer 600

Fee: $250 General/$225 Members
Deposit: $40 General Deposit/$36 Members

Special discount: First six to register get $25 off their registration fees! Note: Please pay the deposit below, and if you are one of the first six to register $25 will be taken off your remaining registration fees on the first day of class.

Registration Closed

It's easy to bat around issues about character, plot, point of view, description, dialogue, setting, pacing, voice and theme (whew!) in terms of writing. But Ed Lin promises to spend as little time as possible talking about those concepts. Lin supports the idea that writing is akin to playing a musical instrument that no one else has ever seen or heard before, and that authors are generally right - even when they aren't sure of what they are doing.

The class requirements are:
1) an irrepressible desire to write and
2) ten pages of new fiction to be workshopped - due before the first class.

Ed Lin is the author of the novels Waylaid, This Is a Bust, Snakes Can't Run and the forthcoming One Red Bastard (Spring 2012).

@The Asian American Writers' Workshop
110-112 West 27th Street, 6th Floor
Between 6th and 7th Avenues
Buzzer 600

Fee: $250 General/$225 Members
Deposit: $40 General Deposit/$36 Members

Add power to your poetic punches and fleetness to your formal footwork. These classes will focus on adding techniques, tension, and twists to your expressive toolbox. Specific classes will focus on landing leaps, torquing turns, and the uses and abuses of certain voids. There will be a weekly writing assignment and workshop as well as assigned readings from contemporary poets and other artists offering varied approaches to the week's topic. Prepare to stretch and tone your mental muscles and learn how to "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant."

Please bring a packet of 3 to 5 short poems (no more than 5 pages) to the first class.

Monica Youn is the author of Barter and Ignatz, which was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award. She has published poems in numerous journals and anthologies including Fence, The Paris Review, and Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. She has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress and has received residencies from Yaddo, MacDowell and the Rockefeller Foundation / Bellagio. She has taught creative writing at Pratt Institute and Columbia University, and is currently the Brennan Center Constitutional Fellow at NYU Law School.

@The Asian American Writers' Workshop
110-112 West 27th Street, 6th Floor
Between 6th and 7th Avenues
Buzzer 600

Fee: $200 General/$180 Members
Deposit: $32 General Deposit/$30 Members

The best works of noir and crime fiction are suspenseful and seductive, and yet they also grapple with difficult social truths. But what makes this genre tick? In this workshop, we will write our own noir short stories, and we will read stories by writers like Jean-Claude Izzo, Raymond Chandler and George Pelecanos. These masters offer invaluable lessons about plot, character and setting, and they force readers to ask an important question: Is there truly a difference between genre fiction and literary fiction?

Hirsh Sawhney is the editor of Delhi Noir, a critically-acclaimed anthology of brand new fiction published by Akashic Books and HarperIndia. Joyce Carol Oates recently selected his short story, "A Bag for Nicholas," for her New Jersey Noir anthology. His writing has appeared in various publications including the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, the Financial Times and Tehelka. He is an Associate Editor at Wasafiri Magazine and a Contributing Editor for the Brooklyn Rail. He teaches at the City University of New York and Rutgers University.

@The Asian American Writers' Workshop
110-112 West 27th Street, 6th Floor
Between 6th and 7th Avenues
Buzzer 600

Fee: $250 General/$225 Members
Deposit: $40 General Deposit/$36 Members