Posted On: February 20, 2012
Journalism Job
Media Organization: Asian American Writers' Workshop
Company Description
ABOUT THE ASIAN AMERICAN WRITERS' WORKSHOP
For nearly twenty years, The Asian American Writers' Workshop (http://www.aaww.org) has been devoted to creating an alternative space of Asian American arts and letters. We're a fast growing cultural center devoted to quirky but curated, progressive arts programming.
Job Description
UPDATED
Open City: Mapping Urban Asian America, a new online magazine on Asian American news and culture in New York, is hiring creative nonfiction fellows to produce content on the vibrant immigrant communities of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. The new magazine will offer smart takes on Asian American (particularly immigrant) culture as it's lived in New York right now. Imagine stories on: the proliferation of x-rated video stories in Sunset Park, migratory patterns of Little Pakistani residents, karaoke bar culture, gentrification in Chinatown, or how Korean taco trucks define ethnic borders and space. Applications are due on March 2, 2012.
What is Open City?
Open City started off as an anti-gentrification blogging initiative aimed to expose the stories of voiceless immigrants in New York City. We're re-launching it this spring with that same goal in mind—and then some. The new magazine—edited by Kai Ma, New America Media award-winner and former editor-in-chief of KoreAm magazine—will offer smart takes on Asian American (particularly immigrant) culture as it's lived in New York right now.
Imagine stories on: the proliferation of x-rated video stories in Sunset Park, migratory patterns of Little Pakistani residents, karaoke bar culture, gentrification in Chinatown, or how Korean taco trucks define ethnic borders and space.
About the Open City Fellowship
Open City seeks to foster emerging writers and develop their exposure and brand as professional writers. Perhaps you have a personal interest in one of these neighborhoods, and you want to help shape its coverage—while also developing a journalistic beat or area of expertise in gentrification, immigration or urbanism. Or you’re a writer that’s published a handful of times, and need a kick in the pants to get your career where you want it to be. Or you’re just hungry for creating stories that you and your friends actually care about. Then this fellowship is for you.
Each fellow will focus on ONE of the following neighborhoods: 1) Manhattan’s Chinatown/Lower East Side, 2) Flushing, Queens, 3) Sunset Park, Brooklyn, 4) Jackson Heights, Queens, and 5) Richmond Hill, Queens. The neighborhood, and the issues and people therein, will become your beat. The news, stories and information you produce are compelling conversation starters about issues that matter to you, the residents and community members you’ll be working closely with. It’s your opportunity to cover a community, and to do so creatively.
And that’s where “creative nonfiction” comes in. Open City is an outlet for original stories with creative flair. This fellowship allows emerging writers to hone their storytelling and “new journalism” skills by placing an emphasis on creative nonfiction—the literary child of muckraking and poetry. Either you need a gateway into this celebrated genre or you’re a creative writer-meets-citizen journalist. If so, we want to hear from you.
Each fellow will report directly to the Open City editor.
Fellows will now receive a stipend of $5,000, an artist retreat at Blue Mountain Center in the Adirondacks, and career lunches with Rebecca Solnit, Wyatt Mason, Jennifer 8. Lee & others. This is a yearlong fellowship that starts April 2, 2012.
To Apply
Instructions here: aaww.org/opencityapply
For more info., contact Kai Ma, editor, at kma@aaww.org.