A Pilgrimage: Creative Nonfiction by Cindy Cheng

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2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize - Honorable Mention, Adult Category I, Pilgrim "It's an absolutely ridiculous way to travel. We don’t even send you a real itinerary, just an outline with hardly any information. You show so much trust in us by just showing up,” Shanthum said in his familiar, British upper-class accent, genuinely bewildered. I felt simultaneously seen and relieved that this little speech was happening at the end, not the beginning of the two weeks the…

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Apology Flowers: Fiction by Laurie Fang

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2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize, Grand Prize Winner - Middle Grade Category A graveyard is where the most flowers are given—where love is offered when it is too late to be received. For souls who are recognized once people realize they’re really gone. Some offerings, the others apologies made of nostalgia. Though she wonders if there is a graveyard where she's able to lay flowers to the ground for herself. For a culture that she once tried to outgrow and a language…

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Assembly Required: Functioning Woman – Fiction by Serena Shih

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2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize, Grand Prize Winner - High School Category This box includes:  ONE preassembled body: upright, not yet stabilized.  ONE voice: factory setting - unfiltered.  ONE ambition: expandable beyond recommended capacity  ONE emotional core: highly responsive to external pressure.  ONE smile: flexible, long wear.  ONE mirror: pre-distorted.  ONE drawer: sealed at factory.  And a surplus of screws labeled:  SHOULD  GOOD…

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Home / 故鄉 : Fiction by Susan Hong

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2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize - Grand Prize Winner, College Category 一份蔥油餅。謝謝。  The girl at the stand regards Natalie with a flattened expression. She would be pretty were her eyes not so artificially narrowed, her lips not pressed so thin, Natalie thinks. Or, rather, this is probably what Natalie’s mother would think. Every day, Natalie is coming to realize more and  more that what she has always thought was the little voice in her head…

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Last Night in Taipei: Fiction by Esther Fung

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2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize – Grand Prize Winner, Adult Category Yang Qiuyue said she would buy the oranges herself.  Because her husband had always liked oranges and even if he couldn’t eat them anymore, he might still want to suck on them. But Rachel — that was what her daughter called herself now, after that girl with the hair from the American TV show — could not be relied on to properly choose fruit. She’d find the measliest ones and overpay for…

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Charles Yu, Grace Loh Prasad, Alvina Ling, Shawna Yang Ryan, Averylin Cummins select 2026 Creative Writing Prize Winners

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We are thrilled to announce the 2026 cohort of honorable mentions, finalists, and grand prize winners of the Betty L. Yu & Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes, established in partnership with TaiwaneseAmerican.org in honor of Charles Yu’s parents, longstanding leaders in the Taiwanese American community. Now in its sixth year, the prize continues to expand.This year, we had four returning judges: Charles Yu, Alvina Ling, Shawna Yang Ryan, and Grace Loh Prasad; as well as a guest reader,…

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Now accepting submissions: 2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes

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TaiwaneseAmerican.org is pleased to announce the 2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes. Created in 2021 in collaboration with Taiwanese American author Charles Yu, the Prizes are intended to encourage and recognize creative literary work by Taiwanese American students, and to foster discussion and community around such work. In 2022, the prize expanded to include a separate middle school category for 6th-8th grade applicants, judged by Alvina Ling. In 2023, we added an additional…

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In the Shadow of a Flag: Creative Nonfiction by G.L. Blandford

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Prologue  I was born in Taichung, Taiwan, in 1974 under circumstances neither clear nor simple – though I would not understand that for decades. My mother, a radical street-smart woman from an upper class Taiwanese family, married a white Catholic U.S. Air Force airman from Kentucky shortly before my birth. My name carries his lineage, his pride, his promise of a better life in the U.S.  For much of my life, he believed I was his son, and I believed it too.  Four years later, my…

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Yagyu: Fiction by Grace A. Lin

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He has a memory of jumping down concrete bleachers, monolithic and grey, like a staircase built for giants. Each drop sends a jolt through his knees; each step is nearly waist-high. There are snacks, too. Salty and crunchy, or sweet and sticky, the manufactured flavor is engineered not just to please, but to wire itself so deeply into a child’s brain that years later, the cravings trigger a sense of nostalgia that feels like truth.  He’s certain that the memory takes place at a baseball…

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Translation is a gift: Creative Nonfiction by brenda Lin

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緣 The first word I translated from Mandarin to English for my husband was 緣. We had met on a summer study abroad program in St. Petersburg during White Nights, when, at the end of each day, the sun dipped below the horizon, just grazing the night, before it glided back up into the sky, and we felt as though time belonged to us. Or, maybe what we felt was that we belonged outside the borders of time. We were bright-eyed twenty-year-olds, newly philosophical and contemplative, but also wild…

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