Edward Gunawan is a storytelling artist and cultural producer whose multimedia projects and community work meditates upon themes of displacement and (be)longing, healing and intimacy, kinship and citizenship within the contexts of post-colonial queer transnationality.

A queer immigrant from Indonesia and of Chinese heritage, Edward is the author of chapbooks The Way Back (winner of Start a Riot! Prize, Foglifter Press, 2022) and Press Play (Sweet Lit, 2020), and has completed over 25 feature and short films as writer, producer, actor, and/or director. Their last two producing projects—How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) and By the Time It Gets Dark—premiered in Berlin and Locarno respectively, and were both honored as Thailand’s Best Foreign Language Film entries for the Academy Awards. Edward served as the Featured Film Artist at Kearny Street Workshop’s 2021 APAture multi-disciplinary arts festival, and their work has been published in TriQuarterly, Aquifer, and The Town anthology (Nomadic Press, 2023), amongst others.

Now residing on Ohlone land in Oakland, Edward is the founder and lead organizer of HOME MADE @ ARTogether—a series of literary arts gatherings that connects, cultivates, and celebrates the stories and storytellers of immigrant and refugee backgrounds in the Bay Area. They also curate and facilitate community gatherings such as “Stories of Marin” mental health storytelling workshop for National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) Marin County and “Press Play: Exhibition” at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center to normalize and destigmatize mental health conversations—for which, they have received support from California Arts Council, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, City of Oakland Cultural Funding Program, and East Bay Community Foundation. Visit addword.com for more info.