Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri headlines panels, talks, and readings; day-long series explores internments past and present
and whether the Asian American experience is reflected in contemporary culture on November 14.

This weekend, the Asian American Writers Workshop AAWW is presenting PAGE TURNER: The Asian American Literary Festival, an unprecedented two-day literary-palooza that brings together over forty writers, including Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael Ondaatje, and David Henry Hwang. Taking place November 13-14, the Festival will encompass the broad territories that contemporary Asian American literature covers today.

PAGE TURNER combines quirky art events with investigations in politics and Asian American identity, and invites audience members to come sip cocktails with renowned writers, listen to a Chinese rocket factory worker, watch poets making video art, hear ukulele-strumming comedian Jen Kwok, visit a reading of Indian crime fiction, and attend panels on Asian American representation and the internment experiences of both Japanese Americans and post-9/11 South Asians.

The first of its kind in the nation, the Festival launches with a gala dinner tonight at the restaurant titled At Vermilion, where legendary literary figure Sonny Mehta, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Alfred A. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, will be honored with the 2009 The Asian American Writers' Workshop's Lifetime Achievement Award. Booker Prize-winning Sri Lankan Canadian writer...

Roger Ebert 1942-2013 Photo: RogerEbert.comRoger Ebert lost his battle with cancer today. He will be greatly missed. Most famous for his film criticism, he was the first movie critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Since 1967, and up to just two days ago he wrote a column for the Chicago Sun-Times.

He authored twenty books, and co-hosted several long-running syndicated television shows including Siskel and Ebert at the Movies. 

I will remember Roger Ebert not only for his reviews and commentary, but also for his advocacy of Asian American cinema.

I thank Roger Ebert for his outspoken support and standing up (literally) for a film called Better Luck Tomorrow.

When Ebert stood on his theater seat and yelled back at an audience member who was chastising the film's director Justin Lin and his cast on stage for making an "empty and amoral" film, it was a watershed moment in Asian American cinema.

Mind you, this was at the third screening of Lin's film Better Luck Tomorrow at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival where alot is at stake. Filmmakers are hoping that distribution deals are made. 

A video posted on Youtube captured the moment. (click here for the full story with the Youtube video). The audience member said, "You know how to make a movie. But why with the talent up there and yourself make a film as so empty and amoral for Asian Americans and Americans?"

Then Roger Ebert gets up and says "What I find very condescending and disturbing about...

Astronaut Leroy Chiao's Space Blog-postcard of Bolivia

This is an interesting shot of a glacier flowing into a lake partially brightened by sunglint. It was fairly cloudy on that orbit over South America, but I caught this through the clouds. Using sunglint is a very effective technique for illuminating sub-surface features in water. But, it also can be used to create a dramatic effect which is aesthetically pleasing. Note the visible rivers in this photo, especially the one on the right side of the lake. Under normal lighting, these would have been very difficult to see.

Click here for AsianConnections' exclusive interview with Leroy while in training at Star City, Russia.

Information on the crew's activities aboard ISS, future launch dates, as well as Station sighting opportunities from anywhere on the Earth, is available on the Internet at:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/

U.S. Astronaut Leroy Chiao's blog and all NASA updates at AsianConnections.com are monitored by AC Editor Lia Chang

THE NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2008 from June 2-July 6 at the IFC Center and the Japan Society.

SUBWAY CINEMA presents THE NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2008 from June 2-July 6 at the IFC Center and the Japan Society. It's seventeen days of new films from Takashi Miike, Johnnie To, Hur Jin-Ho, Koji Wakamatsu and Shinji Aoyama. In addition, this year the lineup includes the documentary YASUKUNI and films from Indonesia (KALA ) and Vietnam (THE REBEL ).

Films will be screened the first fourteen days at the IFC Center (323 Sixth Ave, between 3rd and 4th Streets) and the final four days at the Japan Society (333 East 47th St., between 1st and 2nd Aves) during the co-presentation of several films as part of their JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Films (which runs from July 2-13).

ACCURACY OF DEATH (Japan, 2008) Set in 1988, 2008 and the near future, Takeshi Kaneshiro plays the Grim Reaper who comes to Earth with a talking dog to evaluate the lives of potential dead people in this comedy.

ADRIFT IN TOKYO (Japan, 2007) A scruffy law school student (Joe Odagiri,the Johnny Depp of Japan) is deep in hock to a thuggish, middle-aged debt collector who offers to forgive what he owes if the kid accompanies him on long walks through Tokyo.

ALWAYS 2: SUNSET ON THIRD STREET (Japan, 2007) one of Japan's biggest hits, ALWAYS: SUNSET ON THIRD STREET rocked the New York Asian Film Festival back in 2006 and now the sequel is back to deliver even more mid-century melodrama about a...

April 5, 2013

Hollywood

Thomas Wong is the recipient of the Writers Guild of America, West's 2013 Writer Access Project (WAP) honor. The Writers Guild will showcase Wong's work in drama to industry decision-makers.

Wong joins nine other honorees who were selected for outstanding talent in the areas of drama and comedy.

The winners were selected from the results of judges scores who read written entries and judged on a blind submission basis.

Writers Guild members with extensive showrunning and writer-producer experience served as judges, including award-winning screenwriter, producer and director Shonda Rhimes, creator of Grey's Anatomy and Scandal and screenwriter of The Princess Diaries.

A reading of selections of the honorees' original pilots will be held this month to industry representatives.

Photo credit: Michael Jones, WGA.org  
2013 WAP Honorees, Standing (L-R): Thomas Wong, Michael DiGaetano, Dawn Comer Jefferson, Joey Manderino, Joseph Neustein, Leslie Valdes. Seated (L-R): Sherry Carnes, Geetika Lizardi, Lena Waithe, Margaux Froley Wong's bio states that he always dreamed of becoming a television writer, but, "as the first-born son in a traditional Chinese family, such fanciful notions were downright un-American." Wong earned a degree in English at Williams College, then attended NYU School of Law, "like any good child shouldering the weight of his family’s expectations would."

After several years immersed in labor and...