A Conversation with David Henry Hwang

Please join Hunter College’s Asian American Studies Program for an evening with Tony- and Obie-award winning playwright David Henry Hwang in conversation with journalist Jeff Yang.

Co-sponsored by:
Hunter College Theatre Department
LGBTQ Policy Center at Roosevelt House

DAVID HENRY HWANG is a playwright, librettist, screenwriter, and Professor Emeritus at Columbia University. His stage works include the plays FOB (1980, Obie Award), M. Butterfly (1988, Tony Award), Golden Child (1996, Obie Award, Tony nomination), Yellow Face (2007, Obie Award, Tony nomination), and Chinglish (2011, Drama Desk nomination), as well as the musicals Soft Power (2018, Drama Desk nomination) and Flower Drum Song (2002 and 2025, Tony nomination). Called America’s most-produced living opera librettist by Opera News, Hwang has written thirteen operas, including An American Soldier (2014) and, most recently, The Monkey King (2025). M. Butterfly, Yellow Face, and Soft Power were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The 2024 revival of Yellow Face, starring Daniel Dae Kim, enjoyed a critically acclaimed Tony Award-winning run on Broadway and was broadcast on PBS’s Great Performances. In 2025, Hwang received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dramatists Guild of America.

JEFF YANG is a writer, journalist, and podcast host. He is an expert on Asian American pop culture and is the co-author of RISE: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now (2022) with Philip Wang and Phil Yu and The Golden Screen: The Movies That Made Asian America (2023). Yang previously wrote the “Tao Jones” column for The Wall Street Journal was the “Asian Pop” columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle. He co-hosts the podcast “They Call Us Bruce” with Phil Yu, where they “present an unfiltered conversation about what’s happening in Asian America” and have twice hosted David Henry Hwang to discuss his work.