In a world that’s not just indifferent, but often outright hostile to Asian American complexity, the fact that Kaya continues to exist is no small feat.

This is true now more than ever. With our federal grant programs effectively cut off, and other key sources of funding under threat from anti-DEI initiatives, we will run out of funds to maintain our core operations next March.

Donate HERE to make it rain for Kaya Press! 

We’ve been here before. When the 1998 Asian financial crisis struck, we laid ourselves off and took other jobs in order to continue publishing. When our numbers dwindled down to a staff of one after moving to Los Angeles, and later when global financial crises and pandemics shut down the world, we figured out how to keep publishing nonetheless.

Being an Asian American publisher is more than just a tag line or a marketing ploy. It’s an assertion of our right to not just tell our stories, but to determine which stories are being told and how they’re being framed. As outsiders for the past thirty years, we’ve worked hard to help nurture not only Asian American writers, but just as crucially, Asian American editors to pay attention to what lies outside of the mainstream and attend to the wild and the weird, the experimental and the overlooked—those writings that challenge conventions and overturn expectations. Because without a whole ecosystem of readers, writers, and editors, we’ll never realize the full expansiveness of the Asian American literary imagination.

Before the funding cuts mentioned above, 2026 was set to become our most ambitious year yet. We planned to launch our first-ever South Asian-focused imprint, Kulhar Books. We have 12 titles that are currently in the works. All this is now imperilled. We have had to cut back almost entirely on the kinds of community-based, collaborative events we’re known for, including scrapping plans for the first-ever gathering of Asian American editors. We’ve also been working closely with our staff and board to figure out how to equitably reduce hours and salaries. That’s what these times require.

But we’ve gone as far as we can without additional funding support. Any further reductions would not only derail our production schedule but also potentially cause the loss of the talented young editors who’ve made our growth and flowering possible. We’re asking now—for the first time ever, really—for your support in getting us through this critical but difficult time. This is an inflection point for us in the history of Kaya.

Raising $70,000 will make it possible for us to keep both Associate Editors on part-time and gives us a fighting chance to publish the 6 books scheduled for our spring season. If we raise $140,000 we’ll be able to hire both Associate Editors full-time. And if we can get to $200,000, we will have enough runway to secure our finances through the entirety of 2026.

Help us raise $70,000 by December 31st for Kaya Press staff and operations. Donate here. 

Ideally, we’d like to find folks, companies, and organizations that can be recurring donors to reduce future strain. Giving over time is just as good as giving all at once. Over the next year, we will be reaching out to you all individually about ways to connect more directly over dinners, events, or by sending you books.

We hope to raise the first $70,000 by December 31, 2025 to make our work sustainable.  Here are some of the ongoing initiatives you can participate in—making it possible to steward Kaya Press through the current storm and sustaining this community for the next 30 years. 

• Next-Gen Editors (Milkteeth Books) – $10,000

Experimental manuscripts from exciting new writers facilitated by a fully trained, engaged, and empowered generation of BIPOC editors.

• Primary Sources (Primary Sources: The Miseducation of Elaine H. Kim) – $15,000.00 

The long-awaited memoir of one of the founding scholars of Asian American and ethnic studies in the United States, Elaine H. Kim. This book is a powerful example of the kind of crucial, foundational history that is passing us by and an effort to preserve Asian American history by publishing stories before they are lost.

• South Asian Innovation (Kulhar Books) – $20,000.00

A new, independent, transnational home for South Asian diasporic literature and translation stemming from a simple but urgent discovery: there are no national government agencies or foundations that support literary translation in South Asia.

• Experiments in Form: Lydia’s Funeral Video Redux (Fall 2026) – $15,000.00

Ten years after adapting Lydia’s Funeral Video from the stage to the page, we’re transforming it yet again, this time into a short-form video series. Help us bring the book and performance to multimedia life and connect this classic Kaya book to the abortion struggles of today.

• Literary Oddballs: Akasegawa Genpei (Fall 2026) – $10,000.00

Radical Japanese genius Genpei Akasegawa used art as a catalyst to make people perceive reality differently—and we believe the most essential work literature can do is to let you encounter the world through a radically different mind—a different cultural or linguistic framework—and to be permanently transformed by that encounter.

Please join us in tending this garden and planting seeds of possibility! 

Donate now!