To Love Life
March 17th, 2026 | by Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka
We can’t know the future. We can only work on building the one we want. I want a future filled with the laughter and resilience of children.
About Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka
Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka
Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka (she/they) is a Korean adoptee writer, educator, and community organizer. Chapters of her novel-in-progress have been published in Hyphen Magazine, The Work & Response, The Plentitudes, Mochi Magazine, the Bellevue Literary Review, The Buckman Journal, and more. Other fiction has been in The Portland Review, Colorado Review, Kartika, WomenArts Quarterly Journal, and more. Recent essays can be found at The Oregon Humanities and Beyond the Margins. She is a co-founder of the Constellation reading series, VOICES, a BIPOC Adoptee Community, and Yeondae, a now-retired social justice collective of Asian adoptees. She has organized countless storytelling events centering marginalized voices and teaches writing workshops through Ajumama Workshop, her writing coaching practice.
Joon Ae holds an MFA in creative writing, is a 2007 winner of the AWP Intro Journals Award, a 2x Tin House workshop participant, an Anaphora Arts alumna, a 2024 Oregon Humanities storytelling fellow, and a 2025 recipient of an Asian American Journalists Association award. She lives in Portland, OR in a house full of kids and dogs.