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TOMORROW MAPS & THE BRIDGES YURI BUILT out now!

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A huge thank you to our team and everyone who’s been part of the Narval journey! And thank you to Kai @kainaima for telling our story with such care!

Excited to share our co-founder Aaron Linjun Yu’s feature in @variety ! “Sometimes you find other people standing outside the same room, and you build one together.” We’re so glad we get to build Narval with all of you.

Read the full article through the link in our bio 🔗 or here https://variety.com/2026/biz/news/aaron-linjun-yu-how-narval-films-became-place-where-artists-create-more-freely-1236898814/ And take a look at our website, www.narvalfilms.com, to see what we’ve been working on!

#NarvalFilms #AaronLinjunYu #Variety #Filmmaking

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Thankful ✌️

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Thank you so much to everyone who filled the house in celebration of our 2026 Margins Fellowship cohort and shared their work with us at our open mic, “Archive of the Self,” on Wednesday! 🎤💞 It was a beautiful night of readings and community and we’re so dazzled by our fellows. 🤩 Stay tuned for our next open mic at aaww.org/events/.

Fellow & Staff book picks curated by our Poetry Coalition fellow, Aisha Khan! You can support the work we’re doing to open a public reading room and AAPI-focused library at aaww.org/founding-readers/! 🩷

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2026 Margins Fellows @batoulsm9, @kainaima, @mahappinessiskey, and @yjelainelee present ARCHIVE OF THE SELF, an evening of tracing personal histories and excavating selfhood. 🌙🌌

For their for their inaugural open mic and mixer, the fellows are both asking and answering: Who are you? Who have you been? What makes you who you are? ⛓️‍💥

Join us on July 29 for an exploration of memory, self-invention, and the idea that we are all living inventories of our experiences.

🎤❤️‍🔥 Interested readers should plan to arrive by 6:30pm in order to sign up!!! Learn more & RSVP: aaww.org/events/.

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Big shout out to all the artists, educators and organizers using artmaking and creative expression as a means to preserve and document our histories, teach about united struggles for social justice and build collective consciousness and power across communities! Sharing select images and excerpts from art/education projects honoring Yuri Kochiyama and other ancestors.

#knowyourhistory #decolonizeyourmind #weareallpartofoneanother

1. Yuri Power (1999) - Digital print by Steven Yao-Chee Wong

2. Yuri Tribute (2014) - Digital print by Sahra Vang Nguyen

3. Yuri Kochiyama (2013) - Screenprint by Melanie Cervantes

4. Image from the picture book, The Bridges Yuri Built: How Yuri Marched Across Movements (2024), written by Yuri’s eldest great-granddaughter, Kai Naima Williams, and beautifully illustrated by Anastasia M. Williams (no relation).

5. Blue Scholars music video, Yuri Kochiyama (Live on KEPX) from Cinematropolis, 2011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcDmvJ4pb5c

6. Mural at The Sunset Neighborhood Beacon Center, A.P. Giannini Middle School in San Francisco, CA (2013) by Nils Westergard (2013)
https://apa.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/nils-wideshot.jpg

7. Yuri Kochiyama & Malcolm X mural (2025) by Thao Nguyen French & Chris Rogers in Austin, TX. Pictured here is Carmen Mejia standing in front of the mural in March 2026 after her exoneration and release from prison where she served 22 years for a wrongful conviction. Photo courtesy of Vanessa Potkin.

8. Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama mural (2020) by Rchoi. Located on 326 7th Street in Oakland, CA, this mural was inspired by the promotional poster for the documentary “Mountains That Take Wing” (2009) about Yuri and Angela.

9. From Harlem With Love Mural (2016) designed and painted by the community. The mural is located on Old Broadway between 125th and 126th street, across from the Manhattanville projects where the Kochiyama family used to live.

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Welcome to the 30s Club @emilyeverhard!
Spring Break Forever 🌴🪩🌅
God do I love celebrating you ❤️

📸@alexskbrown 🎶 music performance by @andresquin21

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Introducing Woodward Residency's incoming Winter '26 Guest Residents!

🎉 🎉 🎉

This multi-talented group of established and emerging writers, musicians, academics, visual artists, filmmakers and multidisciplinary artists started working at at Woodward last week and we're thrilled to host them over the next four months!

Based in Ridgewood, Queens, Woodward Residency offers two application based communal workspace Guest Residencies a year — Fall/Winter + Winter/Spring.

For more info about upcoming residencies, and to read bios of past and present residents, visit woodwardresidency.co and sign up for our mailing list to stay in the loop.

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Just finished reading the new anthology *We Are Each Other’s Liberation: Black & Asian Feminist Solidarities* edited by Rachel Kuo, Dr. Jaimee A. Swift and TD Tso. It speaks to so many themes I am wrestling with in my novel, articulating with nuance things that I’ve long struggled to discuss directly.

It also challenged me and left me with new questions for further exploration. (In particular, this morning I’m wondering about how the recent ICE sieges would factor into Tamara Nopper’s powerful essay on captivity.)

Above all, it was a reminder that Black-Asian solidarity is not some fringe movement; its roots are deep, its living practitioners are everywhere, and a liberated future is possible.

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a memory for a lifetime 🥹 thank you endlessly @youngarts

Words cannot begin to describe what a gift it has been to be selected as a YoungArts WWD. This week changed my life. I met the kindest, most brilliant, and deeply talented people and mentors, and formed connections that already feel lifelong. Thank you to the writing panelists, and to the most incredible DC and RAs. Your care, belief, and guidance meant everything.

To my writing cohort, meeting you felt like finding a new home. Learning beside you, workshopping late into the night, laughing, crying, and trusting one another with unfinished lines and raw truths reminded me why I write in the first place. You made me braver on the page and more honest with myself. I am so grateful our paths crossed here.

To everyone else at YoungArts, thank you for creating a space where art is taken seriously. It is rare to be in a room where vulnerability is met with respect and curiosity instead of judgment. Each and every one of you inspired me in different ways, and your talent is breathtaking.

Finally, getting to perform Tiger Queen in front of hundreds of thousands has been a dream since before I even finished writing the poem. Being able to represent my culture, to name the tragedies it has endured, and to call out the ever-growing reality of gender-based violence was the type of representation I always wished I had. It reminded me that poetry is resistance. And to everyone who shared pieces of their own Tiger Queen with me, I will always carry your stories. Your words, your courage, and your honesty live with me now, and your truths are the reason I keep performing and writing. We need to keep amplifying these brutal realities.

Thank you for reminding me what our voices can do 🤍

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are you turkey or are you peas

truly a transformative experience at @youngarts week and one i will always think about. so so incredibly grateful to everyone i've met, the panelists and RAs and speakers and above all fellow artists who have totally changed the way i think about my art and who have beyond impressed me with their own. everyone i met was genuinely incredible and i've learned so so much in such a short time.
#yartsweek #5hourenergy #🫰

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Some of our latest book reviews worthy of your attention!

Visit https://iexaminer.org/category/arts/ to read them all!

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🎉🌀Thank you to everyone who came out to the NYC launch of “We Are Each Other’s Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities” edited by Rachel Kuo @_kuolabear, Jaimee A. Swift @drjaimeeswift and TD Tso @latebloomer.info at Mercury Store in Brooklyn!📣

🌀Shoutout to all the amazing contributors to the anthology! We want to thank poet and activist Kai Naima Williams @kainaima for opening the event, reading her amazing poem that is featured in the anthology and Akemi Kochiyama-Ladson @a.kochiyama, scholar-activist and co-director of The Yuri Kochiyama Solidarity Project @yksolidarityproject, for offering brilliant insights on the legacy of her grandmother, Yuri Kochiyama and the imperative of cross-racial solidarities during our panel discussion. Thank you to @senti_naro & @jakets, co-leaders of @aafc.nyc for introducing and organizing the event and discussing the formation and the critical work of the Asian American Feminist Collective!

🌀Special thanks to the Asian American Writers’ Workshop @aaww_nyc @cupofjyo & Dana Isokawa for originally hosting the Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities collaboration on The Margins and for co-sponsoring the event. Special shoutout to Roisin Davis and the team at Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks for making this anthology come to life! Thank you to Chris for helping with setup, Daleelah Saleh for photography and videography & the team at Mercury for hosting us.

We appreciate all of y’all! 🌀

📸Photos by Daleelah Saleh

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