# Asian American Literary Awards

The Asian American Literary Awards are a set of annual awards that have been presented by The Asian American Writers' Workshop since 1998. The awards include a set of honors for excellence in fiction, poetry and nonfiction, chosen by a panel of literary and academic judges; a Members' Choice Award, voted on by the Workshop's members from the list of that year's entries; and a Lifetime Achievement Award. To be eligible, a book must be written by someone of Asian descent living in the United States and published first in English; entries are actively solicited by the Workshop.

## List of winners

* = Member's Choice Award

### 1998

* Mei-mei Berssenbrugge – Endocrinology
* Lois-Ann Yamanaka – Blu's Hanging

### 1999

* Susan Choi – The Foreign Student
* Arthur Sze – The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–98

### 2000

* Eric Gamalinda – Zero Gravity
* Chang-rae Lee – A Gesture Life
* Bino Realuyo* – Umbrella Country

### 2001

* Ha Jin – The Bridegroom and Other Stories
* Eugene Gloria – Drivers at the Short Time Motel: Poems
* Akhil Sharma – An Obedient Father
* Nick Carbo* – Secret Asian Man

### 2002

* Alexander Chee – Edinburgh
* Luis H. Francia – Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago
* Christina Chiu – Troublemaker and Other Saints
* Don Lee* – Yellow

### 2003

* Walter Lew – Treadwinds: Poems and Intermedia Texts
* Meera Nair – Video: Stories
* Julie Otsuka – When the Emperor was Divine
* Ed Lin* – Waylaid

### 2004

* Mei-mei Berssenbrugge – Nest
* Monique Truong – The Book of Salt
* Vijay Vaitheeswaran – Power to the People
* Patrick Rosal* – Uprock, Headspin, Scramble and Dive

### 2005

* Brian Leung World Famous Love Acts
* Suketu Mehta – Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
* Srikanth Reddy – Facts for Visitors
* Ishle Yi Park* – The Temperature of this Water

### 2006

* Jeff Chang – Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation
* Rattawut Lapcharoensap – Sightseeing
* Shanxing Wang – Mad Science in Imperial City
* Ed Bok Lee* – Real Karaoke People

### 2007

* Linh Dinh – Borderless Bodies
* Amitav Ghosh – Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times
* Samrat Upadhyay – The Royal Ghosts
* Gene Luen Yang* – American Born Chinese

### 2008

* Mohsin Hamid – The Reluctant Fundamentalist
* Vijay Prashad – The Darker Nations
* Sun Yung Shin – Skirt Full of Black
* Ed Lin* – This Is a Bust

### 2009

* Jhumpa Lahiri – Unaccustomed Earth
* Sesshu Foster – World Ball Notebook
* Leslie T. Chang – Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

### 2010

* Paul Yoon – Once the Shore
* Minal Hajratwala – Leaving India: My Family's Journey From Five Villages to Five Continents
* Ronaldo V. Wilson – Poems of the Black Object
* Jason Koo* – Man on Extremely Small Island

### 2011

* Yiyun Li – Gold Boy, Emerald Girl
* Kimiko Hahn – Toxic Flora
* Amitava Kumar – A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm, A Bomb
* Ed Lin* – Snakes Can't Run: A Mystery
* Karen Tei Yamashita* – I Hotel

### 2012

* Roya Hakakian – Assassins of the Turquoise Palace
* Rahul Mehta – Quarantine
* Janine Oshiro – Pier
* Thaddeus Rutkowski * – Haywire

## Lifetime Achievement Award winners

* 2006: Maxine Hong Kingston
* 2008: David Henry Hwang
* 2009: Sonny Mehta