Smiles greeted families, friends and students who gathered to celebrate the 2026 annual Brookline Asian American Family Network (BAAFN) Essay Contest award winners on Wednesday, May 13 at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.
This year, the prompt of the essay was: “As an Asian American, what is your superpower?” Alongside recognizing the winners in each category, organizers delivered moving speeches that shared an overarching theme: the importance of sharing experiences and stories.
The opening remarks were given by Susan Park, Essay Contest Co-Chair and BAAFN Board Member. She was followed by Giles Li, who ran the judging panel for the contest. Both thanked the attendees and acknowledged the winners’ powerful essays.
Alicia Hsu, Brookline’s Woman of the Year in 2026, co-founder and steering committee member at BAAFN, was also in attendance and was called on stage to give a speech. After thanking the audience, writers and others, she read the speech she gave on the day she won Woman of the Year, noting that she had changed some parts to reflect the BAAFN essay contest.
“In all the stuff I get to do with students, teachers, librarians, activists [and] artists, I have been driven by what unites us,” Hsu said. “Spaces of affinity, of celebration, of remembrance, are meant to be filled with our stories, studied, shouted, sung, painted, danced, folded and refolded or simply shared over dumplings.”
Afterwards, the five winners were called up one by one to read their essays aloud to the audience and receive their certificates. Junior Lisa Maruyama won the Creativity Award for her piece, “The Art of Refolding,” and Middlesex School freshman Hudson Huang won the Content Award with his piece, “Obsessed with Din Tai Fung Soup Dumplings.”
Maruyama’s work told the story of her hardships balancing being an Asian-American person and ignoring her own identity through the anecdote of struggling while creating paper cranes with her grandmother and how this mirrored her journey towards self-acceptance.
“My resilience doesn’t come from being an untouched piece of paper. It comes from me being unfolded, flattened and ripped, yet still refusing to be thrown out,” Maruyama said. “My younger self, who hid her identity, is a mere crease of the past that I’m still correcting and folding over to this day. Slowly, I’m becoming the crane I always wanted to be, tattered wings and all.”
The Hsui-Lan Chang Award winners were junior Benjamin Ma, for his essay “In Abundance,” and freshman Hannah Li, for her essay “Escapist.” Finally, the BAAFN Award winner was freshman Regina Qu, for her essay “Rewriting my Story.”
According to Qu, whose essay was about the lack of accurate and fair representation of Asian American people in the media and how that affected her, writing this essay was more than just a piece of work.
“Writing this essay has made me reflect more [on] my identity. I didn’t realize how much of an impact watching the shows that had an Asian side character who was always the butt of the joke really had on me. It made me realize maybe I was strongly impacted by the media,” Qu said.
Eson Kim, director of faculty and fellowship at GrubStreet, a major nonprofit creative writing center, was invited as a keynote speaker. She delivered powerful messages about strength within yourself as a writer and channeling fear into power.
“There are so many external and internal voices that tell us our stories aren’t worthy. The act of showing up despite those worries and battling through a thicket of naysaying and doubt, this is an incredible act of fortitude and bravery,” Kim said.
At the end of the awards ceremony, Park thanked the people in attendance and the people who helped behind the scenes. She urged them to embrace and be proud of who they are.
“Your experiences can inspire the world,” Park said. “Hopefully, contests like this one will encourage you to keep writing, keep exploring, keep being authentically you, because there’s only one you.”
