Join us for the LiterASIAN Writers Festival in Toronto!
This event is free and open to all. First come, first served. Space is limited, and for building access, registration is required in advance. Registration will close once full.
- Date: Thursday, May 29, 2025
- Location: The Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library, 8th Floor, Robarts Library, 130 St. George Street, Toronto
- Register here
Event Part I: LiterASIAN Toronto 2025
Time: 1:15 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. (EDT) (Doors open at 1 p.m.)
We are pleased to invite you to LiterASIAN Toronto 2025, hosted by the University of Toronto’s Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library in collaboration with the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop (ACWW).
This year’s theme, “Origins”, explores heritage and resilience, reflecting two significant milestones:
- The 30th anniversary of the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop (ACWW)
- The centennial of the Chinese Exclusion Act
The theme holds particular significance, connecting ACWW’s decades-long commitment to amplifying Asian Canadian voices with a critical period in Canadian history when the voices of Chinese Canadians were institutionally silenced. The festival offers a fusion of past and present, encouraging a renewed appreciation of identity, cultural preservation, and creative empowerment within today’s Asian Canadian literary scene. Writers will engage in a literary dialogue that fosters cultural understanding, promotes diversity, and amplifies Asian Canadian voices.
Moderator
Carrianne Leung is a fiction writer and assistant professor at the University of Guelph in Creative Writing. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Equity Studies from OISE/University of Toronto. She is the co-editor with Lynn Caldwell and Darryl Leroux of Critical Inquiries: A Reader in Studies of Canada. Her debut novel, The Wondrous Woo, published by Inanna Publications was shortlisted for the 2014 Toronto Book Awards. Her collection of linked stories, That Time I Loved You, was released in 2018 by HarperCollins and in 2019 in the US by Liveright Publishing. It received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, named as one of the Best Books of 2018 by CBC, That Time I Loved You was awarded the Danuta Gleed Literary Award 2019, shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards 2019 and long listed for Canada Reads 2019. Leung’s work has also appeared in The Puritan, Ricepaper, The Globe and Mail, Room Magazine, Prairie Fire and Open Book Ontario. She is currently working on a new novel, titled The After to be released by Harper Collins Canada in spring 2026.
Panelists
Leanne Toshiko Simpson is a mixed-race Yonsei writer, educator, and psychiatric survivor from Toronto. She loves writing joyful, messy, laugh-out-loud stories about living with mental illness and the moments of hope that help us get out of bed day after day. Leanne is a graduate of the University of Toronto Scarborough’s Creative Writing program and the University of Guelph’s MFA. She is currently completing an EdD in Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto. Leanne teaches BIPOC literature and disability arts seminars at Trinity College. Her debut novel, Never Been Better, was released by HarperCollins Canada and Penguin in the U.S., and was named one of CBC’s Best Books of 2024.
Wayne Ng was born in Anishinaabe land in what is commonly known as downtown Toronto to Chinese immigrants who fed him a steady diet of bitter melon and kung fu movies. Wayne is a social worker who lives to write, travel, eat, and play, preferably all at the same time. He is an award-winning author and traveller who continues to push his boundaries from the Arctic to the Antarctic. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and goldfish. Ng is the author of Letters From Johnny (winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best Crime Novella and Ottawa Book Award finalist); Johnny Delivers (recommended by The Globe and Mail and CBC Books); The Family Code (Ottawa Book Award and Guernica Prize finalist).
Mai Nguyen is a Vietnamese Canadian author based in Toronto. Her debut novel Sunshine Nails—about a Vietnamese family that will stop at nothing to save their ailing nail salon—was longlisted for Canada Reads, and was selected as one of the best books of 2023 by NPR and CBC. Her second book will be published in Spring 2026.
Address: University of Toronto, Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library, 8th Floor, Robarts Library, 130 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1A5
LiterASIAN 2025 
