Anna Alves was born in Elmhurst, Queens, NYC, and raised in South Sacramento, CA, though Los Angeles will always be the real home of and in her heart. She holds a B.A. in English and History and an M.A. in Asian American Studies from the University of California at Los Angeles, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Rutgers University at Newark, and is currently researching and writing her dissertation toward a Ph.D in American Studies, also at Rutgers-Newark.
Anna is interested in transpacific literary relations in Filipino fiction writing in English, in and between the United States and the Philippines, and its associated cultural politics of craft and aesthetics. She was a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow in fiction, was twice awarded the Manuel G.Flores Prize Scholarship from Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA), and has also twice been a Kundiman Literary Arts Fiction Fellow. She has been granted writing residencies at Hedgebrook, Voices of Our Nation‘s Arts (VONA), Las Dos Brujas Workshop at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, and the N. V. M. and Narita Gonzalez Writers’ Workshop in both the U. S. and the Philippines.
Her writing has appeared in Amerasia Journal, Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing, Strange Cargo: The Emerging Voices Anthology, Kartika Review, Our Own Voice: Filipinos in the Diaspora e-zine, Dismantle: an anthology of writing from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Empire of Funk: Hip Hop and Representation in Filipino America, the Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife, and Kuwento: Lost Things — anthology of new philippine myths.
After a philanthropic career as a Program Associate in Media, Arts and Culture at The Ford Foundation in New York City (where she coordinated and edited the national report, Towards a Cultural Community: Identity, Education and Stewardship in Filipino American Performing Arts), a Program Manager at the Asian Pacific Fund in San Francisco, CA, and as a freelance consultant contributing to several projects around hip-hop aesthetics, particularly Total Chaos: The Art And Aesthetics of Hip-Hop, edited by Jeff Chang, she was Staff and Programs Manager at the UCLA Academic Advancement Program’s Graduate Mentoring Program (GMP).
She has taught English Composition to first-year students at Rutgers-Newark, university courses in Asian American history and experiences as well as Asian American literature, and fiction writing to both college and high school students. After living and creating for several years in Jersey City, New Jersey, then earning a Fulbright fellowship to the Philippines in 2018-2019, this lifelong UCLA Bruin and fervent Los Angeles Dodgers fan is delighted to now be based in Quezon City, Metro Manila, pursuing her creative and intellectual passions and contributing her energies to projects around the globe.
Anna is interested in transpacific literary relations in Filipino fiction writing in English, in and between the United States and the Philippines, and its associated cultural politics of craft and aesthetics. She was a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow in fiction, was twice awarded the Manuel G.Flores Prize Scholarship from Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA), and has also twice been a Kundiman Literary Arts Fiction Fellow. She has been granted writing residencies at Hedgebrook, Voices of Our Nation‘s Arts (VONA), Las Dos Brujas Workshop at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, and the N. V. M. and Narita Gonzalez Writers’ Workshop in both the U. S. and the Philippines.
Her writing has appeared in Amerasia Journal, Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing, Strange Cargo: The Emerging Voices Anthology, Kartika Review, Our Own Voice: Filipinos in the Diaspora e-zine, Dismantle: an anthology of writing from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, Empire of Funk: Hip Hop and Representation in Filipino America, the Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife, and Kuwento: Lost Things — anthology of new philippine myths.
After a philanthropic career as a Program Associate in Media, Arts and Culture at The Ford Foundation in New York City (where she coordinated and edited the national report, Towards a Cultural Community: Identity, Education and Stewardship in Filipino American Performing Arts), a Program Manager at the Asian Pacific Fund in San Francisco, CA, and as a freelance consultant contributing to several projects around hip-hop aesthetics, particularly Total Chaos: The Art And Aesthetics of Hip-Hop, edited by Jeff Chang, she was Staff and Programs Manager at the UCLA Academic Advancement Program’s Graduate Mentoring Program (GMP).
She has taught English Composition to first-year students at Rutgers-Newark, university courses in Asian American history and experiences as well as Asian American literature, and fiction writing to both college and high school students. After living and creating for several years in Jersey City, New Jersey, then earning a Fulbright fellowship to the Philippines in 2018-2019, this lifelong UCLA Bruin and fervent Los Angeles Dodgers fan is delighted to now be based in Quezon City, Metro Manila, pursuing her creative and intellectual passions and contributing her energies to projects around the globe.
Current Projects
- NVM Gonzalez Archives Collection @ University of the Philippines, Diliman, Philippines
- UCLA Samahang Pilipino Archives Collection @ UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
- NVM & Narita Gonzalez Transpacific Writing Workshop
- Resilience Institute for Community Empowerment (development resources for arts & cultural non-profits working toward social justice)
- History of Filpino American Arts in Los Angeles: An Oral History Project
Courses
Workshop course where original works by students are critically discussed as a class under the guidance of an instructor so that the works may be developed further. Students are challenged to explore different thematic preoccupations in their fiction.
Asian American Literature and Culture
Multidisciplinary introduction to Asian American literature and cultural production, with examination of some combination of novels, short stories, poetry, drama, performance, film, visual art, music, and/or new media.
Asian American Literature and Film
Engages students with Asian American experiences with frame of “coming of age.” Uses mixture of novels, short stories, essays and films to explore how Asian populations and communities “came of age” in the U. S. in the twentieth century.
Asian American Images & Identities
Enhances student knowledge of diverse lived experiences of Asian Americans in the United States as depicted in U. S. American society during contemporary times, with an eye toward historicizing as well as critiquing current events and popular culture.
The short story unit of a sequence of humanities units exploring selected topics in an on-site, after-school, early college program for academically motivated high school students.
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