The Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop (ACWW) began as a writers' collective with the intention of developing and nurturing Pacific Rim Asian writers, which started in the late sixties to early seventies with a handful of community activists who had also become writers. Holding meetings in the living rooms of its members, the ACWW fostered a community of writers and built literature that was distinctly Asian Canadian. The earliest publications featured two anthologies: Inalienable Rice: A Chinese and Japanese Canadian Anthology (1979) and West Coast Line: The Asian Canadian and the Arts (1981). Incorporated formally into a non-profit organization in 1995, the early ACWW accomplished a number of successes: writing workshops, literary anthologies, book clubs, mentorship of new writers, one-on-one manuscript development sessions, an annual reading series, chapters in Edmonton and Toronto, and the creation of the ACWW Emerging Writer’s Award.
Founding members began to publish as well: Paul Yee’s Teach Me How to Fly Skyfighter (1983) (illustrated by SKY Lee); Jim Wong-Chu’s Chinatown Ghosts (1986); Paul Yee’s Curses of Third Uncle (1986), Tales of Gold Mountain (1989); SKY Lee’s DisappearingMoon Café (1990). These pioneers saw the need to form an organization to promote its history and literary culture. The idea of ACWW was born. The seminal Many-Mouthed Birds anthology (1991) also served to awaken the mainstream to the richness of Chinese Canadian literature. This was followed by:
By the turn of the new millennium, ACWW became a significant influence on the Asian Canadian literary world and worked hard to uncover emerging writing talent and assist them in finding publishers. Those were heady days. ACWW fundraised to create an ACWW Emerging Writers’ Award. The $4,000 award was innovative because it was a strategy to attract manuscripts from emerging writers. The $4,000 award was given to the publisher as an incentive to help cover the costs of editing and production. Although there could only be one winner, ACWW worked on the other manuscripts in hopes that one day they, too, would find their way to a publisher.
Ricepaper Magazine
Ricepaper Magazine began as a newsletter for the organization well before ACWW was incorporated in 1995. In early 1996, the Canada Council offered an initial project grant to turn it into a magazine format that would fit into their funding criteria.
ACWW welcomed the new money and saw it as an opportunity to provide additional service and a way for our writers to display their work. Ricepaper Magazine has published a diverse range of established, emerging, and international writers, establishing itself as a cornerstone for Asian Canadian literature.
Founding members began to publish as well: Paul Yee’s Teach Me How to Fly Skyfighter (1983) (illustrated by SKY Lee); Jim Wong-Chu’s Chinatown Ghosts (1986); Paul Yee’s Curses of Third Uncle (1986), Tales of Gold Mountain (1989); SKY Lee’s DisappearingMoon Café (1990). These pioneers saw the need to form an organization to promote its history and literary culture. The idea of ACWW was born. The seminal Many-Mouthed Birds anthology (1991) also served to awaken the mainstream to the richness of Chinese Canadian literature. This was followed by:
- Denise Chong’s Concubine’s Children (1994);
- Sky Lee’s Bellydancer (1994);
- Lydia Kwa's poetry, The Colours of Heroines (1994);
- Wayson Choy’s Jade Peony (1995) ;
- Larrisa Lai’s When Fox was a Thousand (1995)
- Thuong Vuong-Riddick’s ground-breaking bilingual poetry, Two Shores / Deux Rives (1995).
Many of these pioneer writers began to win prizes.
- Paul Yee’s Tales of Gold Mountain (1989) was awarded the BC Book Prize and the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Book Prize (1990).
- SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café (1993) was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Governor General’s Award and won the Vancouver Book Prize.
- Wayson Choy’s Jade Peony (1995) won
- Denise Chong's Concubine’s Children (1994) won the Vancouver Book Prize, the Edna Stabler Award, and the Vancity Book Award, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Book Award, and was on the Globe’s best sellers list for 93 weeks.
- Larrisa Lai’s When Fox was a Thousand (1995) was shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award.
By the turn of the new millennium, ACWW became a significant influence on the Asian Canadian literary world and worked hard to uncover emerging writing talent and assist them in finding publishers. Those were heady days. ACWW fundraised to create an ACWW Emerging Writers’ Award. The $4,000 award was innovative because it was a strategy to attract manuscripts from emerging writers. The $4,000 award was given to the publisher as an incentive to help cover the costs of editing and production. Although there could only be one winner, ACWW worked on the other manuscripts in hopes that one day they, too, would find their way to a publisher.- One of these success stories is Terry Woo’s ground-breaking Banana Boys (2005). It was one of those shortlisted for the 1999 Asian-Canadian Writers' Workshop Award.
The winner of our first EWA award, in 1999, was Rita Wong’s Monkeypuzzle, published by Press Gang. The second Emerging Writer Award went to Madeleine Thien in 2001 for her short fiction, Simple Recipes. Madeleine’s manuscript impressed McLelland & Stewart so much that they offered her a two-book deal. Simple Recipes went on to win the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the City of Vancouver Book Prize, and was a finalist in the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Book. Her second book, Certainty (2006), won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada Award, the Ovid Festival Prize, and was a finalist for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize for Fiction. Her latest novel, Dogs at the Perimeter (2001), continues to be published by McLelland & Stewart. Interestingly, Madeline was a former editor of Ricepaper Magazine.
- ACWW tried in successive years to work with other genres including children’s fiction but had little success with persistence, finally, in 2010, ACWW in cooperation with Tradewind Books produced a new young adult anthology Henry Chow and other stories.
- Following the Many-Mouthed Birds anthology, ACWW produced two additional anthologies, Swallowing Clouds: An Anthology of Chinese Canadian Writing by Arsenal Pulp Press (1999) and Strike the Wok: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Canadian Writing (2003).
ACWW alumni graduated to bigger and better things. The following is a list of the names of some of the writers who had their start with ACWW and are finding their way into the mainstream:
Marisa AnLin Alps, Louise Bak, Lien Chao, Ritz Chow, Glenn Deer, Sean Gunn, Jamila Ismail, Gaik Cheng Khoo, Laiwan, Jen Lam, Pei Hsien Lim, P.K. Leung, Kam Sein Yee, Sylvia Yu Friedman, Ben Soo, Grace Chin, Ritz Chow, Jessica Jin-Jade, Kagan Goh, David M Hsu, Harry Huang, Winston C Kam, Edward Y C Lee, Iris Li Loretta Seto, Sherwin Tjia, Gien Wong, Caroline Wong, Annie Zhu, Kentaro Ide, Kwan-Yun Li, Kelle Ngan, Linda Mah, Tony Wong, Day's Lee, Kyo Iona Maclear, Taien Ng-Chan, Patria Rivera, Sook Kong, Sally Ito, Yan Li
- Weyman Chan’s poetry first appeared in Many Mouthed Birds: Contemporary Writing by Chinese Canadians. His first book of poetry, Before a Blue Sky Moon (2003) won the National Magazine Awards Silver Medal for Poetry, in 2003. Noise from the Laundry (2008) was a finalist in the Governor General’s Award for poetry. Hypoderm: Notes to Myself (2010) is his latest book.
- Andy Quon, co-editor of the anthology, Swallowing Clouds: An Anthology of Chinese-Canadian Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press), came out with a book of short fiction, Calendar Boy (2001) and poetry, Slant (2001), Six Positions: Sex Writing (2005) and Bowling Pin Fire (2007).
- Co-editor of Strike the Wok: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Canadian Fiction in 2003, Lien Chao’s first book, Beyond Silence: Chinese Canadian Literature in English (1997), won the Gabrielle Roy Award for Canadian Criticism. Her second book, Maples and the Stream (1999,) is a long narrative poem written in both English and Chinese. Her third book is a creative memoir, Tiger Girl (2001)
- Slam poet, Jen Lam, self-published her poetry, Memoirs of a Dragon-Eater (2000)
- Fiona Tinwei Lam’s first book of poetry, Intimate Distances (2002), was a finalist for the City of
- Former treasurer and board member of ACWW, Larry Wong’s Dim Sum Stories: A Chinatown Childhood (2011) recounts his early life in
- May Q, Wong’s A Cowherd in Paradise: From China to Canada (2012) is a moving tale about the lives of her family, forced apart for twenty–five years because of the hardship of the Head Tax but overcame discrimination to eventually run a successful Montreal restaurant.
- Ann Shin’s poetry, Last Thing Standing (2000). She is currently working on a novel and a book of poems called Belonging. A suite of poems from Belonging was produced for broadcast on the CBC Radio One program ‘Living Out Loud’.
- Singapore-Canadian Goh Poh-Seng’s The Girl from Ermita & Selected Poems (1998) and As Though The Gods Loved Us (2000) were published by Nightwood editions.
- Toronto writer, Terry Watada, began with a book of poetr,y A Thousand Homes (1995) and followed up with the short fiction Daruma Days (1997) followed by two books of poetry Ten Thousand Views of Rain (2001) and Obon: The Festival of the Dead (2006) and his first novel, Kuroshio: The Blood of Foxes, (2007)
- Former Ricepaper editor Alexis Kienlen’s She Dreams in Red (2007) and 13 (2011) were published by Frontenac House.
- Toronto-based poet, Louise Bak, is the author of Emighty (1995) ,Ginkgo Kitchen (1997, and Tulpa (2002)
- Lily Chow’s Sojourners in the North (1996) won the Jeanne Clark Local History Award. Her second book is Chasing Their Dreams: Chinese Settlement in the Northwest Region of British Columbia (2001). Both books are used as textbooks in many colleges and universities.
ACWW has also demonstrated a long-standing commitment to fostering new talent. Its mentorship programs, writing workshops, and writer-in-residence initiatives have supported the development of early-career authors. The organization has provided opportunities for Asian Canadian writers to gain visibility in mainstream publishing, helping launch the careers of many who have gone on to national recognition.
ACWW has been central in producing landmark projects such as AlliterAsian: Twenty Years of Ricepaper Magazine (2015). This celebrated anthology captured two decades of writing published through Arsenal Pulp Press.
Ricepaper Magazine
Prominent artists that have been featured include Wayson Choy, Joy Kogawa, Evelyn Lau, Jack Wang, Kid Koala, and Sook-Yin Lee, as well as cultural producers and figures such as David Suzuki, Bing Thom and Roy Miki. Ricepaper also supports emerging artists; those who have worked or written for Ricepaper magazine have gone on to become notable writers and cultural activists such as Madeleine Thien, Kevin Chong, Craig Takeuchi, Alan Woo and Rita Wong.
Asian Canadians and Asian Americans featured in Ricepaper include Tommy Chong, Wayson Choy, Lixin Fan, Ann Marie Fleming, Joy Kogawa, Larissa Lai, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Joyce Lam, Evelyn Lau, Sook-Yin Lee, Harvey Lowe, Roy Miki, Lily Hoy Price, Andy Quan, Tetsuro Shigematsu, David Suzuki, Bing Thom, Adrian Tomine, Terry Watada, Milton Wong, Rita Wong, Tobias Wong, and Norman Yeung.
Featured writers have included:
Joy Kogawa – author of Obasan, Canada’s seminal novel about Japanese Canadian internment
Evelyn Lau – award-winning poet and memoirist (Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid)
Madeleine Thien – Giller Prize–winning author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing.
Paul Yee – Governor General’s Award–winning writer of children’s and young adult fiction.
Jen Sookfong Lee – novelist, broadcaster, and editor (The Conjoined).
Hiromi Goto – author of Chorus of Mushrooms and Hopeful Monsters.
Larissa Lai – poet and novelist (Salt Fish Girl, Automaton Biographies).
Fred Wah – former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, Governor General’s Award winner.
Rita Wong – acclaimed poet and environmental activist (Forage).
In 2016, Ricepaper transitioned into a fully digital publication, ensuring its accessibility to a broader readership and adapting to changes in the publishing industry.
In addition to publishing, ACWW has played a leading role in building a literary community through the LiterASIAN Festival, launched in 2013. As Canada’s first festival dedicated to Asian Canadian writing, LiterASIAN provides an annual space for authors, readers, and communities to connect through readings, workshops, and panels. The festival has hosted acclaimed writers such as Joy Kogawa, Madeleine Thien, and Catherine Hernandez, while also spotlighting emerging voices. LiterASIAN has been instrumental in breaking down silos between cultural communities and positioning Asian Canadian literature within the broader Canadian canon.
Its inaugural festival featured influential authors such as Terry Woo (Banana Boys), Denise Chong (memoirist and City of Vancouver Book Prize winner), C.X. Cheng (Wolf Coven), Larry Wong (memoir Dim Sum Stories), Julia Lin (Miah), and Terry Watada (Nikkei Manga-gatari). Here's a selection of succeeding festivals:
- Featured a diverse author lineup including Madeleine Thien, Evelyn Lau, Kevin Chong, Michael Kaan, Alice Poon, and others.
- Hosted panels like Is There Such a Canon? The Evolution of Asian Canadian Writing, and launched a new edition of Chinatown Ghosts—celebrating Jim Wong-Chu’s legacy as a pioneering Asian Canadian poet.
2021: “GlobalAsian: from Grassroots to Globalization”
- Recognizing the transnational nature of Asian identity and storytelling
- Transitioned to a virtual format during the pandemic, enabling global participation and accessibility
2022: “Finding Our Voices, Telling Our Stories”
- Emphasized the transition from page to screen, spotlighting Asian Canadian writers exploring film and TV formats
2024: “Re(Dress)”
- Featured heavyweight voices like Joy Kogawa, Ujjal Dosanjh, Lindsay Wong, Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio, Keiko Honda, and Angie Wong.
- It included readings, workshops, panel talks, and a special Wine and Words: Dimsum with the Authors fundraiser in collaboration with Word Vancouver Literary Festival.
Through its partnerships with cultural institutions, such as the Historic Joy Kogawa House, Centre A, the Chinatown Storytelling Centre, the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, the Chinese Canadian Museum, and the Vancouver Japanese Language School & Japanese Hall, the festival has encouraged intergenerational exchange and preserved the legacy of Asian Canadian writing through these community spaces.
ACWW commemorated its 30th anniversary in 2025, celebrating its accomplishments from a small collective into a national leader in Asian Canadian literature. In the same year, it also acknowledged its 50th anniversary since the merger of the Chinese Canadian Writers' Workshop and the Japanese Powell Revue. “Rooted in Community: Sean Gunn’s 50-Year Journey with ACWW” is an interview with Sean about his memories of the past half-century.
ACWW commemorated its 30th anniversary in 2025, celebrating its accomplishments from a small collective into a national leader in Asian Canadian literature. In the same year, it also acknowledged its 50th anniversary since the merger of the Chinese Canadian Writers' Workshop and the Japanese Powell Revue. “Rooted in Community: Sean Gunn’s 50-Year Journey with ACWW” is an interview with Sean about his memories of the past half-century.
It is heartening that ACWW's accomplishments—Ricepaper Magazine, the LiterASIAN Festival, the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award, and other mentorship and publishing initiatives, and cultural partnerships—have created lasting infrastructure for writers and ensured that Asian Canadian voices continue to flourish within Canada’s literary imagination.