Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken: Creative Nonfiction by Kelly Chu

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2025 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize – Grand Prize Winner, College Category From the judges: “Playful and poignant, this submission infuses simple family recipes with deep emotional resonance. A bold and original take on themes of food, family, and inheritance.” Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken  Ingredients:  2 lbs of boneless childhood (preferably thigh meat, for tenderness)  1 cup of cultural ambiguity (1 part Taiwanese brown sugar, 1 part American corn syrup)…

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Charles Yu, Grace Loh Prasad, Alvina Ling select 2025 Creative Writing Prize Winners

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We are thrilled to announce the 2025 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 fourth year, the prize continues to grow in reach and resonance, with writer Grace Loh Prasad joining the judging panel this year alongside returning judges Charles Yu and Alvina…

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How Far We Stray: Fiction by Angelica Lai

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2025 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize - Grand Prize Winner, Adult Category From the judges: “Combining vivid physical descriptions with nostalgic reflections, this tale of an adult daughter returning to her deceased mother’s homeland is simultaneously tender and unsentimental. Intelligent and polished… a clear standout.” I sit by my mother’s death bed and read about caecilians, worm-like creatures that survive by tearing off their mothers’ milky blue skin. The mother…

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Change in Atmosphere: Creative Non-Fiction by Evelyn Wu

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  It was someone else dressed in this striped red uniform, someone else who slung the same red backpack everyone was required to use on her shoulder, hiding the real reason she was trembling by the weight of the backpack. It wasn’t me who smiled a watery smile with a pounding heart, social anxiety kicking in stronger than before. It was my first day of sixth grade, back to school after abruptly leaving my 5th grade class back in America. When Covid hit, I refused the masks and social…

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Now accepting submissions: 2025 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes, in Celebration of Taiwanese American student and adult writers

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TaiwaneseAmerican.org is pleased to announce the 2025 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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Rude: Creative Nonfiction by Colette Chang

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The mallard duck is everywhere. It is the ancestor of all duck species. Although their mating season is not until spring, mallard ducks form relationships much earlier, courting in the winter, and eventually laying eggs in the summer. When ducklings are first born, they are all the same yellow-bellied babies. They live harmoniously as adolescents in their separate spheres. For the first months of their lives, mallard ducklings waddle as a clutch behind their mother. As equals.  At ten months,…

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In the Name of Scientific Progress: Fiction by Susan L. Lin

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The Present  Two years ago today, The Present saw its first Runaway. Soon after, the second followed suit. Then a third, a fourth, and a fifth. By now, they numbered in the tens of thousands. The tech had been a long time coming, but Sunny still felt nothing but dread when she first heard news of a device that boasted the ability to transport living things back into The Past. Phoenix Industries, a private research and experimental laboratory with locations all over the world, had reportedly been…

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“the most Taiwanese thing about me” & Other Poems by Juliana Chang

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the most Taiwanese thing about me after katie mansfield   not the tub of bean curd in my freezer. not the Lao Gan Ma chili oil I drink by the spoonful like my Ba. not how I fish pork blood out of my soup to drop into my brother’s bowl, not any acre of my mouth, really.   not my two passports or my two names. not the yearbook photo retake  that made twins of me in 2nd grade, Ting Wei and Juliana printed out side by side. not the time I made…

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Soon Enough, Later: Fiction by Naomi Gage

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It had been six weeks, but the memory lay in her like the pit of a stone fruit. Lila hunched over in the passenger seat, leaning her head against the cold, greasy glass of the window. Rain drummed the glass with a wild, hammersome kind of fury that seemed fatally separate from the precise, measured conversation inside the car. Lila fantasized punching the window open, breaking it like a flower splitting into bloom, fractals spiraling everywhere— how the bone would brutalize the skin, nerves lighting…

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