The Asian American Literature Festival is back and here’s what to expect
The nine-day festival involves both virtual and in-person events across the globe for API literary communities
The last Asian American Literature Festival was held in 2019.
Photo by Hannah Colen
Words by Lisa Kwon
The future is ancient. That is, our networks of love and care have existed for centuries, and they will outlast the powers that try to take us down. Leave it to our Asian diaspora to know.
So when Neela Banerjee, Ching-In Chen, Yanyi, and other fellow organizers were discussing the theme for 2024’s Asian American Literature Festival (AALF), “Cosmic Kinship” fit the excitement they harbored about reviving the festival after it abruptly lost its support and funding from the Smithsonian last year. There was something speculative about building a relationship filled with hope.
“The cosmic reminds us that we are not only living in an industrial, capitalistic time, but a celestial and historical one as well,” Yanyi, founder of the Asian American Literary Archive, says. “We are siblings, aunts, and uncles to each other in the actions we share in history. We are not only witnesses to each other's luminosity—we make it together so we may inscribe something different in the skies.”
The now-independently funded festival kicked off Sept. 14 and will run through Sept. 22. With both virtual and in-person events (all free) in New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu, and Australia, the nine-day event explores how Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Asian diasporic literary communities have long been there for each other. Festival organizers include storied literary presses such as Kaya Press, Asian American Writers Workshop (AAWW), and Kearny Street Workshop, as well as new groups such as Chen’s Reorienting Reads and the Asian American Literary Archive. Each participating group has used its own funding sources, such as book sales, to put on its events.
One important guideline among these groups has been to practice value-driven planning so that it defies existing notions of a conventional literary festival.
The nine-day event explores how Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Asian diasporic literary communities have long been there for each other.
“It used to be that we focus on what books are coming out and those authors, then throw together panels based on that, and I've seen terrible programming come from that,” Banerjee, who is the managing editor for Kaya Press, says. “[Instead we want to focus on], is the author going to feel so good and proud of the work and [are they] going to leave this event having had a f*cking ton of fun?”
Under the harvest moon, AALF began its programming with a virtual moonrise invocation hosted by AAWW. That same day, Kearny Street Workshop hosted a Bay Area Book Fair at the Chinese Cultural Center in San Francisco. There was also a virtual conversation among poets and writers that was live streamed from Australia and will be available to view throughout the festival.
“The opening and closing ceremonies are going to feel particularly meaningful to me this year because they'll symbolize the beginning of a new chapter for the AALF collective after what's been a difficult year for the Asian American literary world,” Yanyi says.
Organizers are excited about the fluidity that a hybrid festival brings to what would have otherwise transpired in fall 2023 in Washington, D.C. The full lineup of events can be found on the festival’s website.
“Even though it was unfortunate to lose that support, it's definitely forced us to be more creative and more collaborative,” says poet and writer Chen, who founded Reorienting Reads a year ago in response to the loss of last year’s festival.
On July 5, 2023, just weeks before the festival, the Smithsonian canceled the AALF, citing “unforeseen circumstances.” It would have been a welcome return for the festival since it was last held in 2019, marking a return since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Washington Post reported that the event had been “under routine review for controversial content,” although it remains unclear how much of this contributed to the decision to cancel the festival. The festival collective never received an actual reason for Smithsonian’s withdrawal, but an open letter from the organizers speculates that their event may have been canceled, in part, because of the trans and nonbinary content included in the programming, as the Smithsonian’s acting director received a report that identified potentially sensitive or controversial content hours before the cancellation notice. In this letter, the collective also mentions that it never received any explanation or accountability from Smithsonian leadership.
“A lot of the staff that we worked with weren't allowed to talk to us in order to keep their jobs, and there was just such a lack of communication,” Banerjee says. “So we were really protected from knowing anything that was happening or that they were bearing the brunt of [our] ideas.”
But AALF organizers have found a bright spot through it all; they can now uplift the programs that gave the institution pause. This year, Reorienting Reads has revived several ideas that could not come to fruition in 2023, such as a meetup and book swap at AAWW in New York for trans, intersex, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people, and a pop-up with Mam’s Books in Seattle, where the group will be giving out free books written by and centering trans voices.
What’s more, AALF organizers are excited for the opportunity to try more off-kilter events. Banerjee is personally excited for Kaya Press’s “literaoke” event on Sept. 17, with Tuesday Night Project, the longest-running Asian American open mic night that operates in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. The literary press will invite cultural producers and three random attendees to read a work of their choice, and perform a karaoke song of their choice, accompanied by a live band.
“It's going to be such fun chaos,” Banerjee says. “I would be scared to death to be a writer singing with a live band, which is a completely different experience than a terrible karaoke track, but what I've noticed from those events is that the energy in the room is so electric.”
Literaoke has been a popular event among many groups participating in the AALF. For those based in New York, AAWW, alongside Reorienting Reads, and other peers, will host another literaoke event at AAWW’s space on Sept. 21, following a marathon reading where guests will read aloud poetry and prose by Palestinian voices straight through for four hours.
For those who want to participate online, attendees can forge connections through different activities such as writing prompts and discussions on AALF’s Discord server—which people will be connected to once they attend events. Kaya Press is also hosting a digital “sala,” Tagalog for living room, led by poet Jason Magabo Perez and featuring a lineup of Filipinx writers and poets who will read their respective works in person or by patching in via Zoom.
AALF organizers are looking forward to staying true to cosmic kinship, grounding themselves in the honest work of bringing something together after what could have been a disappointing end. With a new decentralized approach to building the festival, the organizers are eager for readers to enjoy the fruits of their yearlong labor.
“I learned a lot from the resources we didn't have anymore and the solidarity that comes out of scarcity,” Yanyi says. “I am grateful for what we have done and also excited for what we will build on top of the foundations we had to create this year.”
Published on September 16, 2024
Words by Lisa Kwon
Lisa Kwon is a writer and journalist based in Los Angeles, CA. With a preservationist lens, she enjoys writing about her city and the diasporic movements of the 20th century that have made it one of the most culturally diverse areas in California. You can find her work in Vulture, Eater, Vice, PAPER, Cultured Magazine, and many more.