Shawn Wong Receives AUPresses' 2021 Stand UP Award

Author, professor, activist, and Asian American literature advocate Shawn Wong received this year’s Stand UP Award from the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) during the organization's virtual 2021 Annual Meeting on June 7. The award honors those who, "through their words and actions, have done extraordinary work to support, defend, and celebrate the university press community," and is intended to recognize advocates who "are not on staff at a member press but who stand up from within the communities that presses work with, speak to, and serve."

Wong, who is Chinese American, was recognized for "leading grassroots efforts in 2019-2020 to protect the University of Washington Press’s right to publish the landmark 1957 novel No-No Boy by Japanese American author John Okada (1923-1971)." Wong's campaign led to Penguin Random House withdrawing its own Penguin Classics edition of the text and licensing an international edition from UWP, with the Okada family receiving royalties on all copies sold. Wong also created the Shawn Wong Book Fund in Asian American Studies book series with the UWP in 2019. Wong has taught at the University of Washington since 1984, and is the author of two novels: Homebase (Reed and Canon, 1979; reissued by Plume in 1990 and again by UWP in 2008) and American Knees (Simon and Schuster, 1995; reissued by UWP in 2005).