Since 2015, the Asian American Studies Lecture Series has brought speakers from across the arts, humanities, and social sciences to Princeton to explore diverse aspects of this continually evolving field.

In 2019-20, in collaboration with the Lewis Center for the Arts and the Department of English, the series is dedicated to contemporary Asian American letters, to showcase the recent explosion of Asian American creative writers and to highlight the expansive geopolitical diversity of what constitutes Asian American letters today.

Karan Mahajan is the author of Family Planning, a finalist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and The Association of Small Bombs, which was shortlisted for the 2016 National Book Award, won the 2017 Young Lions Fiction Award from the NYPL, and was named one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2016. In 2017, he was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. His reporting and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The New Yorker online, and other venues. He is an assistant professor at Brown University.