“Our impulse is to trust writers and follow their lights. In cases where we’re editing and working closely with them, it’s to help them get to that place that they’re wanting to get to, but might want some structure or help getting there…I wish there was a movement to push editors to have less unconscious ideals in mind and to be more open to a wider range of possibility and to ask editors to push themselves to better understand and try and live inside the works that they’re reading, even as they’re evaluating them. To work with them to better move in those directions as opposed to breaking them off and charting them in a new course that is kind of by their lights as opposed to by the piece’s lights.” —Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, Asian American Literary Review

The Asian American Literary Review is a space for writers who consider the designation “Asian American” a fruitful starting point for artistic vision and community. In showcasing the work of established and emerging writers, the journal aims to incubate dialogues and, just as importantly, open those dialogues to regional, national, and international audiences of all constituencies. We select work that is, as Marianne Moore once put it, “an expression of our needs…[and] feeling, modified by the writer’s moral and technical insights.” Published biannually, AALR features fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, translations, comic art, interviews, and book reviews.

Their reading period is June 1 to September 1.

Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis is Curator of Asian Pacific American Studies at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. He is also founding director of the Washington, DC-based arts nonprofit the Asian American Literary Review.

Gerald Maa is editor-in-chief of the Asian American Literary Review. His essays, poetry, and translations appear in places such as Poetry, Criticism, A Sense of Regard: Essays on Poetry and Race, and Push Open the Window: Contemporary Poetry from China. He lives in Long Beach.

Host: Rachel Thompson
Sound Editor: Mica Lemiski
Presented by Room magazine and the Lit Mag Love Course

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