Charles Yu, Shawna Yang Ryan, Alvina Ling Select 2023 Creative Writing Prize Recipients

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We are pleased to announce the 2023 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 Yu’s parents, who are longstanding Taiwanese American community leaders. In its third year, the prize has expanded to include adult writers of all life stages. Their work will be published on TaiwaneseAmerican.org throughout the year. The Prizes are named in honor…

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Now accepting submissions: 2023 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes celebrate Taiwanese American student and adult writers

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TaiwaneseAmerican.org is pleased to announce the 2023 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. This year, we have added an…

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Naomi Zhenmei Gage: Strange Pastures

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Once upon a time, a man swallowed a goat.  The man was very large and the goat was small enough to sit on a seed of grass, so tiny that individual organs and miniscule details could not be detected. Viewed by the naked eye, he was only a dash of white.  The man was not what one would describe as a diligent chewer. The goat passed through his mouth relatively unharmed, loaded on a morsel of pork floss with his eyes half-open and his fetlocks tucked under its chin. The motion was horrible…

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Tyler Tsai: Furikake Gohan

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Fatigue gnaws you as you slide onto the wooden stool of your favorite midnight diner. The air is smokey, pungent with the scent of shoyu and steam exhaling from the rice cooker. When it clears, you see your chef dicing green onions and cracking eggs, which he whisks into a creamy froth. As your eyes salivate and your stomach stares, the chef pours the liquid egg into a sizzling pan, which hisses as he slices golden jewel aspic into tiny cubes to melt over your hot rice.  If you were presented…

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Yakuza Baby: Mooncakes

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You will know when you see it: there are people–most often children, but adults too–who are lost. Lost in themselves. They do not know their own hearts, but in time to come, they will learn. Hopefully. Most have been this person at some point in their lives, sometimes they will find themselves for a brief, fleeting moment before falling, lost once more. Eileen Tan was one such individual–or not-individual.  The almost-twelve-year-old had dark hair that was in plaits one week, loose…

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Josephine Cheng: The Best Day

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Nothing wakes the woman this morning. Perhaps a dream, but she doesn’t remember. She  opens her eyes, her back spread flat against the bed and her covers stopping right at the nose. Sun  slants in between window shades. From where she lays, the woman sees dust motes twinkling.  For a while, she lays there, her gaze unfocused, her mind blank. Content.   She thinks, Snow. The door to her room eases open, and a cat slips in. It leaps onto the  bed, curling up against the woman. She pulls…

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Anastasia Yang: Crosswalk・Catwalk

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  On the intersection of Zhongxiao E. Road and Fuxing S. Road, the streets are crowded with sounds of office workers heading home, parents bringing toddlers on walks, and classmates going out for snacks after school. It’s five thirty in the evening in Taipei, my favorite time, and the last glimmers of sunlight are reflecting off the glass panels of surrounding buildings as the street vendors set up their stalls. The city begins to wake up after a long day, filling up with conversation…

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Hannah Han: Rusted Dawn

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Laopopo: great-grandmother Laogongong: great-grandfather In Shandong, mountains rise like fists from the earth, and pagoda trees blossom, releasing wild fuchsia plumes between the ancient fingers. Beneath the mountains, two rivers melt into a vein pulsing with grass carp, silver bream, and slippery crustaceans. It was there that my laopopo and her friends swam in the summer, opening their eyes beneath the water and counting how many pebbles they could collect from the river bottom before…

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Ian Yu-Hung Tseng: “Deconstructing Daan Forest Park”

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From The First Journal of Lost Taiwan’s History, Pub. 2087, Vol. 12, Iss. 8, p. 122-127 Daan Forest Park once sat in the heart of Taipei, at least according to the cardiologists at the National Taiwan University Hospital, though the pulmonologists must have been more popular when they supposedly nicknamed the park, “the lungs of Taipei City.” Surrounded by a metropolis that suffocated in its own humid smog, it is said that Daan Forest Park offered a block of fresh air with its fir trees,…

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