Contributors / June 2016 (Issue 32)


Guest Editors
ImageB.B.P. Hosmillo helped select the poetry in the June 2016 issue of Cha. He is the author of The Essential Ruin (forthcoming) and Breed Me: a sentence without a subject (AJAR Press, 2016) with Vietnamese translation by Hanoi-based poets Nha Thuyen and Kaitlin Rees. His poetry is anthologised in Bettering American Poetry (BlazeVOX, 2016) and has recently appeared or forthcoming in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Blueshift Journal, BOAAT Journal, Transnational Literature, minor literature[s], & other publications. Hosmillo is the founding editor of Queer Southeast Asia: A Literary Journal of Transgressive Art. Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it [Cha profile]

ImageMag Tan Yee Mei helped select the prose in the June 2016 Issue of Cha. She received her BA in History of Art and English Literature from the University of East Anglia. She was the Heritage Open Days 2012 Assistant at Norwich HEART and is currently working on a second collection of short stories in Singapore. Her first collection The Eyesmith and Other Tales can be found on Smashwords. Visit her website for more information. [Cha profile]

ImageReid Mitchell, Consulting Editor of Cha, was one of the two editors (along with Tammy Ho Lai-Ming) of the "Distance" section in the June 2016 Issue. He has also published poems in Softblow, Eastlit, and other journals. A New Orleanian, he currently teaches in China. [Distance] [Cha profile]


 
Abner Dormiendo
ImageAbner Dormiendo is a writer and a teacher from the Philippines who graduated with a degree in philosophy in Ateneo de Manila University. He received the Don Carlos Palanca Awards for Literature last 2015 for his poetry in Filipino. His other works, both in English and Filipino, appeared in High Chair, Plural Prose Journal, and Heights Ateneo, among others. [Poetry]
 
AP
ImageAP is a writer, artist and translator from Bucharest, Romania. Recent works have appeared in Kentucky Review, Diverse Arts Project, Kyoto Review and Elke Journal. Her chapbook of found poems is available from SOd Press and another poetry chapbook is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. [Photography]
 
Andreas Winardi
ImageAndreas Winardi an English lecturer at Duta Wacana Christian University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He got his MA from De La Salle University, Manila, the Philippines. He is very interested in literature and intercultural communication. [Reviews]
 
Anthony Tao
ImageAnthony Tao's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Borderlands, Kartika Review, Cottonwood, Open Road Review, Blue Fifth, Poetry East West, Five 2 One, Eunoia Review, and an anthology of China writing entitled While We're Here. He currently lives in Beijing, where he recently coordinated the international China Bookworm Literary Festival, captains an Ultimate Frisbee team, and runs the news/society/culture blog Beijing Cream. [Poetry]
 
Antony Huen
ImageAntony Huen is a PhD student at the University of York, where he is investigating how contemporary poets draw inspirations from visual art. Since his research started taking shape, he knows he has made the right decision to take a break from teaching and devote himself to the analysis of contemporary poetry. [Poetry]
 
Bo Schwabacher
ImageBo Schwabacher is an adopted-Korean American. Her poems have appeared in CutBank, diode, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Word Riot, and elsewhere. Her poetry is forthcoming in decomP, Muzzle, Redivider, and WomenArts Quarterly Journal. Bo is traveling to South Korea this summer to care for babies and children in a babies' home. She teaches at Northern Arizona University. [Poetry]
 
Bob Bradshaw
ImageBob Bradshaw is very grateful to the journals that have published his work. His poems can be found at Apple Valley Review, Cha, Eclectica, Pedestal, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Stirring and many other publications. When he isn't napping he can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it [Poetry] [Cha profile]
 
Cameron Morse
ImageCameron Morse taught and studied in China. He is currently an MFA candidate at University of Missouri–Kansas City and lives with his wife, Lili, in Blue Springs, Missouri. His work has been or will be published in I-70 Review, TYPO, Otis Nebula, Sleet, Steam Ticket, Referential Magazine, Rufous Review, Small Print Magazine, Two Hawks Quarterly and First Class Literary Magazine, Phantom Kangaroo and District Lit. Visit his Facebook page for more information. [Distance]
 
Chip Dameron
ImageChip Dameron's seventh collection of poems, Drinking from the River: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2015, was published in 2015. He has recently placed poems in Eastlit, Poetry Pacific, and Langdon Review. [Poetry]
 
Chris Galvin Nguyen
ImageChris Galvin Nguyen is a writer and photographer dividing her time between Canada and her second home, Việt Nam. She is grateful to her in-laws for enduring countless questions about Vietnamese culture and history. Her words and images have appeared in various anthologies and literary journals, including Descant, PRISM International, Room, and others. Her memoir piece "Flood Season", published in the March 2012 issue of Cha, was a finalist for a Best of the Net award. Her essay "Bombshell" was chosen as runner-up for best creative nonfiction in Briarpatch Magazine’s 2015 Writing in the Margins contest. Nguyen is currently looking for a home for her recently completed manuscript, Breakfast Under the Bodhi Tree, a book about living, eating, and tour-guiding in Việt Nam. [Photography]
 
Damyanti Biswas
ImageDamyanti Biswas's short fiction has been commended at the Bath Flash Fiction Award and her novel-in-progress was long-listed for the Mslexia Novel Competition and Bath Novel Award. Her stories have appeared at Bluestem, Griffith Review, Lunch Ticket, among others, and anthologies in the USA, Malaysia and Singapore. [Fiction]
 
Desirée Jung
ImageDesirée Jung is a writer who has published translations, poetry and short stories in Exile, The Dirty Goat, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Antigonish Review, The Haro, The Literary Yard, Gravel Magazine, Tree House, Hamilton Stone Review, Ijagun Poetry Journal, Scapegoat Review, Storyacious, The Steel Chisel, Loading Zone, Belleville Park Pages, among others. Her book of short stories, Desejos Submersos, is published by Chiado Editora, in Portugal. She has received a film degree at the Vancouver Film School, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of British Columbia. Visit her website for more information. [Distance 1 | 2]
 
Dragoș Ilca
ImageDragoș Ilca is a graduate student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Coming from Romania and taking a detour through Amsterdam, he ended up in Hong Kong researching on world literature. He worked as a part-time freelance writer and has several published stories and poems in magazines no one will ever read. Still, he thinks literary greatness is just around the corner. [Reviews]
 
Gopika Jadeja
ImageGopika Jadeja is a poet and translator from India. She publishes and edits a print journal and a series of pamphlets for a performance-publishing project called Five Issues. Her work has been published in Asymptote, The Four Quarters Magazine, The Wolf, Indian Literature, Vahi, etc. She is currently working on a project of English translations of poetry from Gujarat, India. [Poetry]
 
Henry Wei Leung
ImageHenry Wei Leung is the author of a chapbook, Paradise Hunger, which won the 2012 Swan Scythe Press Poetry Prize. He earned his degrees from Stanford and the Helen Zell Writers' Program, and has been awarded Kundiman, Soros, and Fulbright Fellowships. He finished a year of research on the literatures and protests in Hong Kong, and is continuing this research at the University of Hawaii at Manoa toward the completion of a PhD. [Poetry]
 
Jedd Ong
ImageJedd Ong is an accountancy student by day, an aspiring poet by night, a full time corporate slave monkey for his loving parents' family business, and founding member of Ampersand, a Filipino community organisation that aims to encourage youth expression through art and letters. His work has also been published by the following organisations: The Thing Online, Ampersand, and the UP Guilder Institute. Check out his projects and works here, here, and (sometimes) here. He also thinks he's a foot shorter than he actually is. [Distance]
 
Jonathan Louis Duckworth
ImageJonathan Louis Duckworth is an MFA student at Florida International University and a reader for the Gulf Stream Magazine. His fiction, poetry, and non-fiction appears in or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Fourteen Hills, PANK Magazine, Literary Orphans, Cha, Superstition Review, and elsewhere. [Poetry]
 
Karen Kao
ImageKaren Kao is a native of Los Angeles, California and long-time resident of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The child of Chinese immigrants, she is currently working on a set of four interlocking novels set in 1930's Shanghai. Her earlier work has appeared in Jabberwock Review and Gumbo. [Fiction]
 
Laura Jew
ImageLaura Jew is a Kundiman Fellow and graduate of Mills College with a BA in Creative Writing. She is the winner of CSU Chico's Associated Writing Program Award for poetry (2007) and has been published in Watershed Review, Margie: The American Journal of Poetry, About Place Journal. She is currently working on her first full-length book of poetry. [Poetry]
 
Lia Dun
ImageLia Dun teaches introductory communications courses for English majors at the Chinese University of Hong Kong as part of the two-year Yale-China Teaching Fellowship. She graduated last May from Yale University with a degree in East Asian Studies and is interested in Asian American history and literature. [Reviews]
 
Melissa De Silva
ImageMelissa De Silva has enjoyed a career in magazine journalism in Singapore. She has had short stories published in The Wilderness House Literary Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and the upcoming LONTAR: Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction. She writes about Eurasian identity and culture and is working on a novel on that subject. [Creative non-fiction]
 
Michael Tsang
ImageMichael Tsang is a native of Hong Kong, and holds a PhD from the University of Warwick, researching on Hong Kong English writing. His broader research interests are on postcolonial and world literature with an Asian focus. He writes stories and poems in his spare time, and is always interested in learning new languages. Michael is a Staff Reviewer for Cha. Visit his Warwick profile for more. [Reviews] [Cha Profile]
 
Nick Admussen
ImageNick Admussen is an assistant professor of Chinese literature at Cornell and the author of Recite and Refuse: Contemporary Chinese Prose Poetry, available in October 2016 from the Hawaii University Press. He is the author of three chapbooks, and his poetry has appeared in Fence, Boston Review, and DIAGRAM. He is an active translator from Chinese, and his translations of the Sichuan poet Ya Shi have appeared in Cha, New England Review, Asymptote and many other journals. [Distance]
 
Paola Caronni
ImagePaola Caronni has been living in Asia since 1995. She is a freelance translator, interpreter and tutor of Italian language and holds an MA in English Language and Literature from the University in Milan, Italy. She loves writing poems and fiction and one of her poems is included in the poetry collection Desde Hong Kong: Poets in Conversation with Octavio Paz. Since 2014, she has been a regular contributor to the cultural platform Beyond Thirty-nine, where she publishes blog-posts and coordinates cultural projects. Caronni is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Hong Kong. [Distance]
 
Reto Winckler
ImageReto Winckler is currently a PhD candidate at the English Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Originally from Hamburg, Germany, he has lived in China for the past eight years. His research focus is madness in Shakespeare, but he is also interested in philosophy, modern literature, German history, America, and the written word in general. He lives with wife and dog in Shenzhen. [Reviews]
 
Rosie Lee
ImageBorn and raised in Southern California, Rosie Lee is a Taiwanese-American and currently an undergraduate student at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business, pursuing a double major in operations research and information systems as well as a minor in creative writing. Before attending college, she was a competitive figure skater and enjoyed backpacking. Though she plans to establish a career in business and technology, she hopes to continue writing in the future. [Fiction]
 
Rushda Rafeek
ImageRushda Rafeek is currently based in Sri Lanka. Her poems and fiction have been published in print and online publications including The Rumpus, Vayavya, Monkey Bicycle, Mandala Journal, ARTRA, Junoesque Literary Journal, Harpoon Review and The Missing Slate, among others. [Photography]
 
Siddharth Dasgupta
ImageSiddharth Dasgupta is an Indian poet and novelist who also articulates travel and culture for names such as Travel+Leisure, Conde Nast Traveller, and the Dharamshala International Film Festival. He submits himself regularly to writing's myriad moods - short stories, flash fiction, and free verse included. His first novel, Letters from an Indian Summer, was released in early 2015 and has met with consistent critical acclaim. Dasgupta is currently putting the finishing touches to an experimental collection of poetry, together with finessing a collection of short stories — which he shall duly offer up to the first publisher who asks nicely. He can be found on Facebook and Twitter. Visit his website for more information. [Fiction]
 
Suzanne Lai
ImageAn ardent bibliophile and cinephile, Suzanne Lai sees the world in vivid colours. With a concentration in Comparative Literature, she straddles both Chinese and English narratives with untethered imagination. Hoarding a vast collection of novels and vinyl records, Suzanne lives dangerously under a wavering tower of words and rhythm. [Photography]
 
Troy Cabida
ImageTroy Cabida (b. 1995) is a Manila-born writer currently based in London, UK. Some of his recent poems have appeared on WORK, Pinched, We Are A Website, The Traveling Poet, W.A.L.K., Eastlit and The Ofi Press, where his poem was translated into Spanish. He currently writes for Infinity House and has written for Instazine21, Migreat and The Online Rag. He has been credited as editor for Siblíní Journal, Thought Notebook and 30 Days Dry, a debut poetry collection by Robert Eric Shoemaker. He has a self-published poetry ebook, Lost in London, released in 2015. Visit his blog for more information. [Distance]
 
Usha Akella
ImageUsha Akella has authored four books and scripted and produced one musical. Her most recent book The Rosary of Latitudes is published by Transcendental Zero Press. She was selected as a creative ambassador for Austin in 2014-15 and she has been invited to many international poetry festivals in Colombia, Macedonia, Nicaragua, Mexico, India, Turkey, Slovakia, Slovenia, among other places. Akella will join a group of eminent South Asian poets to read at the House of Lords in June 2016. She is the founder of the Poetry Caravan, which provides free readings at senior homes, women shelters and hospitals. She will pursue an MA in Creative Writing at Cambridge university, UK in Autumn 2016. [Interview]
 
Xylene Tandoc
ImageXylene Tandoc is a young emerging poet and writer. Although Fanfiction's legitimacy is debated upon in the literary scene, she writes it extensively. Aside from dystopian literature, her personal works (yet to be published) focus on the relationships and identity of young queer women. She hopes that her fiction writing could be a means for LGBT activism. Tandoc often restlessly roves around East Asia in her burgundy combat boots seeking stories to tell for her great perhaps. Baguio City, Philippines is currently the place which she calls home. Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it [Fiction]
 
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