Contributors / September 2014 (Issue 25)


Guest Editors
ImageKate Rogers's latest poetry collection, City of Stairs, debuted in Toronto and Hong Kong in 2012. She is co-editor of the women’s poetry anthology, Not A Muse: The Inner Lives of Women, with Viki Holmes (Haven Books 2009). Her poetry collection, Painting the Borrowed House (Proverse), appeared in 2008. She is also co-editor of the forthcoming anthology of Hong Kong poets, Outloud Too, with Vaughan Rapahatna and Madeleine Slavick ( autumn 2013). Rogers co-edited the "Whither Hong Kong?" section, along with Tammy Ho Lai-Ming, Michael O'Sullivan and Michael Tsang. [Whither Hong Kong?] [Cha profile]

ImageMichael O’Sullivan is from Ireland and he teaches literature in Chinese University Hong Kong. He writes short stories, poems and essays and he has published a book on James Joyce and Marcel Proust and a book on Michel Henry. His essays appear in such journals as Mosaic and Parallax. His most recent book is Weakness: A Literary and Philosophical History. O'Sullivan co-edited the "Whither Hong Kong?" section, along with Tammy Ho Lai-Ming, Kate Rogers and Michael Tsang. (Photo credit: Dan Short) [Reviews | Whither Hong Kong?] [Cha profile]

ImageMichael Tsang received his BA in English and MPhil in Gender Studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is now reading for a PhD degree at the University of Warwick, specializing in postcolonial English literature in Hong Kong. Language and literature are part of his life. He likes to write stories and poems in his spare time, and is devoted to language learning. His ultimate goal is to learn Tibetan and Finnish. Tsang is a Staff Reviewer for Cha and he co-edited the "Whither Hong Kong?" section, along with Tammy Ho Lai-Ming, Kate Rogers and Michael O'Sullivan. Visit his Warwick profile for more. [Review 1 | Review 2 | Whither Hong Kong?] [Cha profile]

ImageNicholas Wong helped select the poetry in Issue 25 of Cha. His second poetry collection, Crevasse, will be published by Kaya Press in Spring 2015. He is an assistant poetry editor for Drunken Boat and lives in Hong Kong. Visit his website for more information. [Cha profile]

ImageRheea Mukherjee helped select the prose in Issue 25 of Cha. She received her MFA in creative writing from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Her work has been published in Ultra Violet, Southern Humanities Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Bombay Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Her previous fiction has been a Top 25 finalist in Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Award and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her unpublished collection of stories, In These Cities We Dreamed, was a Semifinalist in the Black Lawrence Press, St Lawrence Book Award, 2011. She co-founded Bangalore Writers Workshop in 2012 and currently runs Write Leela Write, a creative laboratory in Bangalore, India. [Cha profile]
                                                                                                                                                                         

 
Aaron Chan
ImageAaron Chan is a Hongkonger who loves literature and his city. He received both his BA and MPhil degrees at the Department of English of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where his passion for literature was first cultivated. He is currently an English teacher at a local secondary school, trying his best to let his students appreciate the beauty of English language and literature. [Whither Hong Kong?]
 
Andrew Barker
ImageAndrew Barker operates the online poetry lectures website mycroftlectures—YouTube and is the author of the poertry book Snowblind from my Protective Colouring. He  holds a PhD in American Literature and an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and is currently teaching at Hong Kong Baptist University. [Reviews] [Cha profile]
 
Andrew Purches
ImageAndrew Purches has had poetry published in Four W, Blue Dog and Blackmail and he has had spoken word published as part of the Red Room Troubadours CD anthology. He has just published his first book of poetry Seasons Behind Windows. He writes novels, short stories, plays and poetry and currently lives in Sydney. [Poetry]
 
Andrew S. Guthrie
ImageAndrew S. Guthrie was born in New York City, lived for most of his life in Boston, Massachusetts, moved to Hong Kong in 2005. His writing can be found online at Make Do Studios and Weaponizer and in Poetry Is Dead print magazine. His chapbook Alphabet will be released in late fall of 2014 through Proverse. [Whither Hong Kong?]
 
Anneli Matheson
ImageAnneli Matheson is an Assistant Editor with Black Lawrence Press. She is currently editing a poetry anthology cookbook titled Feast: Poetry and Recipes for a Full Seating at Dinner, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in November 2014. Matheson is an MFA candidate at City University of Hong Kong, studying creative non-fiction. She grew up in Colorado, in the western United States, and has lived in Canada, Hong Kong and Spain. Presently, she is sojourning in Vermont. [Creative non-fiction]
 
Antony Huen
ImageAntony Huen holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham. He teaches academic English and creative writing for a living and writes poetry for pleasure and self-actualization. At this moment in time, he feels that Mr. Keating's call to contribute a verse is stronger than ever. [Whither Hong Kong?]
 
B.B.P. Hosmillo
ImageB.B.P. Hosmillo is a Southeast Asianist queer poet. He received the JENESYS Invitation for Graduate Student Research Fellowship in 2011 and the National University of Singapore—Asia Research Institute Graduate Student Fellowship in 2012. He attended Sophia University in Tokyo. Currently, he is based in Rumatá Artspace in South Sulawesi, Indonesia where he is completing a collection of poetry. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Kritika Kultura, OCHO: A Journal for Queer Arts, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Far Enough East Journal, Mascara Literary Review, Sundog Lit, and elsewhere. [Poetry] [Cha profile]
 
Christian Benitez
ImageChristian Benitez hails from Rizal, the Philippines. He is currently finishing his undergraduate degree in Literature-Filipino in the Ateneo de Manila University. He was a fellow for poetry in the 12th Ateneo National Writers Workshop and 14th IYAS National Writers Workshop. His works have been published in High Chair, Heights, transit, and elsewhere. He began writing poetry after one afternoon last summer, when he found himself walking in a concrete stairs filled with red petals — an odd setting for a guy walking home. Visit his website for more information. [Poetry]
 
Christopher (Kit) Kelen
ImageChristopher (Kit) Kelen is an Australian poet, scholar and visual artist, and Professor of English at the University of Macau, where he has taught Creative Writing and Literature for the last fourteen years. Volumes of his poetry have been published in Chinese, Portuguese, French, Italian, Swedish and Filipino languages, and an Indonesian collection is currently in preparation. The most recent of Kelen's dozen English language poetry books is China Years – New and Selected Poems. His next volume of poems Scavengers Season is being published by Puncher and Wattman in 2014. At the time of writing Kelen’s poetry and painting exhibition Pictures of Nothing at All is on display at the Macao Museum of Art. Prior to that, the most recent of Kelen’s half dozen solo painting exhibitions was held in 2013 at the Galeria do Salao Medieval, Largo do Paco, Braga, Portugal. For the last several years Kelen has been facilitating the translation of Chinese poetry into English and Australian poets into Chinese, projects which have so far produced a dozen large scale bilingual anthologies. He has also published two scholarly volumes about poetry: Poetry, Consciousness, Community (Rodopi, 2009) and City of Poets – Exploring Macao Poetry Today (ASM, 2009) and his theoretical study of national songs, Anthem Quality, was published in 2014 by Intellect Press in the UK and the University of Chicago Press. Kelen is the Editor of the new cross-arts international on-line journal The Wonderbook and Literary Editor for Postcolonial Text. (Oil portrait of Kit Kelen by Sue Taylor) [Art]
 
Collier Nogues
ImageCollier Nogues’s first book of poems, On the Other Side, Blue, was published by Four Way Books in 2011. Her erasures and redactions can be found in the online journals At Length, Mead and Matter, and other recent poems have appeared in The Literary Review, The Cincinnati Review, and as the American Academy of Poets' Poem-A-Day feature. She teaches creative writing at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and co-curates Hong Kong's Ragged Claws poetry craft talk series. [Reviews]
 
Daryl Qilin Yam
ImageDaryl Qilin Yam is an aspiring writer of prose and poetry, reading English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Warwick. His work has been published in Esquire (Singapore), Ceriph, Cha and elsewhere. He is currently working on his first novel. Visit his website for more information. [Poetry] [Cha profile]
 
David William Hill
ImageDavid William Hill served as assistant editor for two oral history books from Voice of Witness, Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy (McSweeney’s, 2014) and Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives (McSweeney’s, 2008.) His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Cha, [PANK], Catamaran Literary Reader, Chicago Quarterly Review, Hobart, and J Journal: New Writing On Justice, among others, and was a finalist for the 2014 Montana Prize in Fiction. A native of Northern California, he currently teaches Directed Reading and Critical Writing in the MFA program at City University of Hong Kong. [Photography 1 | 2] [Cha profile]
 
Emily Cheung
[Whither Hong Kong?]
 
Geralyn Pinto
ImageGeralyn Pinto lives in Mangalore, India where she serves as Head of the Department of English at St Agnes College (Autonomous). She is a poet and short story writer. Among her more significant achievements are prizes in the 2005 Outlook Magazine - Picador (India) Contest, the 2010 Unisun-Reliance TimeOut Contest and the 2013 International Shakespearean Creative Writing contest organized by the Save as Writers group, Canterbury. Her poems have been featured in journals published by the University of Leeds, Mahidol University, Thailand and the University of London. Pinto belongs to the British writers group, Alibi, and is currently engaged in writing her first novel. [Poetry]
 
Henry Wei Leung
ImageHenry W. Leung was born in Zhongshan, then raised in Honolulu and California. He is the author of a chapbook, Paradise Hunger (Swan Scythe, 2012), and the recipient of Kundiman, Soros, and Fulbright fellowships. He is currently in Hong Kong researching its languages and literatures, parsing poems from pronouns. [Whither Hong Kong?]
 
Hong Mei
ImageRaised in the Jiangsu countryside, Hong Mei (b. 1981) has always been a free spirit with a passion for exploring. In 2007 she and her husband, travel photographer Tom Carter, embarked on a year-long backpacking journey together across all 33 provinces of China. In 2009, they made the great leap to India. Her journals from that wild, romantic and groundbreaking adventure across the entire Indian subcontinent became her first book, The Farther I Walk, The Closer I Get To Myself (走得越远, 离自己越近), sold by Peony Literary Agency to Thinkingdom and published in 2014. [Photography]
 
Iris Fan
ImageIris Fan Xing is currently a PhD student in the School of Humanities in the University of Western Australia, working on a comparative research project of contemporary Australian and Chinese women's poetry that involves creative writing and translation studies. Her bilingual (Chinese-English) book of poems Lost in the Afternoon was published by ASM in Macao in 2009. She was awarded first prize in the Poetry Section of the Hong Kong City Literary Awards 2011. [Poetry]
 
Jamie Wang
ImageBorn in Shanghai, Jamie Wang is an Australian writer splitting her time between Hong Kong, Melbourne and any places that fascinate her. She is currently an MA candidate at Deakin University. Her works have appeared in Australian and Asian journals such as Mascara Literary Review and Eastlit. Apart from writing fiction, non-fiction and poetry, her interest lies in the role of literature in the context of sociology. She previously worked in the financial field before embarking on a writing journey to fulfil her long time passion for literature. [Creative non-fiction]
 
Jason Eng Hun Lee
ImageJason Eng Hun Lee has been published in a number of journals and he has been a finalist for numerous international prizes, including the Melita Hume Poetry Prize (2012) and the Hong Kong University's Poetry Prize (2010). He currently teaches literature at Hong Kong Baptist University. [Reviews] [Cha profile]
 
Jason S Polley
ImageJason S Polley is Associate Professor of contemporary fiction at Hong Kong Baptist University. He completed his PhD at McGill University, Montreal, in 2007. His research interests include Irish fiction, postmodern literature, comix and graphic novels, post-structuralism, and contemporary Indian fiction. He has published articles on women and property in John Banville, the Jonathan Franzen and Oprah Winfrey debacle, slum ideology in District 9, media machination in Watchmen, and critical race theory in Jane Smiley’s The Greenlanders. His monograph is titled Jane Smiley, Jonathan Franzen, Don DeLillo: Narratives of Everyday Justice. He has two creative nonfiction books: a short-story collection, Refrain, and a literary journalism novella, Cemetery Miss You. [Whither Hong Kong?] [Cha profile]
 
Jessica Siu-yin Yeung
ImageJessica Siu-yin Yeung is an MPhil student in the Department of English Language and Literature at the Hong Kong Baptist University. She is working on a thesis on Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield. Her major research interests are in comparative literary studies, life-writing studies, Chinese literature, and literary modernism. She likes reading, writing, cats, humour, nature/city, gastronomy, travelling, watching biopic, period drama, and literary adaptations, and listening to music from the 60s and Philip Glass. [Poetry]
 
Jessica Yeung
ImageJessica Yeung, Associate Professor of Translation at Hong Kong Baptist University. In addition to academic writings, she also publishes literary translations and performing arts criticisms, creates theatre performances, and participates in productions of independent documentary films. Her current works are mostly concerned with marginal voices in China, in particular Uyghur culture in Xinjiang. [Wang Zang]
 
Joel Gn
ImageJoel Gn is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore. His research considers cute design as a technology of the lovable and explores the phenomenological implications of the aesthetic in interactive agents such as digital partners and social robots. Gn's other interests include critical theory, science fiction and East Asian popular culture. [Reviews]
 
Joseph Han
ImageJoseph Han is a graduate student in English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He is also the current director of Mixing Innovative Arts, a monthly reading series in Honolulu. His work has appeared in Hawaiʻi Review, Metazen, Used Furniture Review, The Molotov Cocktail, Word Riot, and elsewhere. [Poetry]
 
Karen An-hwei Lee
ImageKaren An-hwei Lee is the author of Phyla of Joy (Tupelo 2012), Ardor (Tupelo 2008) and In Medias Res (Sarabande 2004), winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award. She is also the author of two chapbooks, God’s One Hundred Promises (Swan Scythe 2002) and What the Sea Earns for a Living (Quaci Press 2014). Her book of literary criticism, Anglophone Literatures in the Asian Diaspora: Literary Transnationalism and Translingual Migrations (Cambria, 2013), was selected for the Cambria Sinophone World Series. She earned an M.F.A. from Brown University and a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, she lives and teaches in greater Los Angeles. Lee is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. [Poetry]
 
Kimarlee Nguyen
ImageKimarlee Nguyen was born and raised in Revere, Massachusetts to a family of Khmer Rouge survivors. Her family’s traumatic but triumphant history, as well as her own experience of growing up in a traditional Cambodian household, has shaped the heart of her writing. She received her BA in English from Vassar College and is currently an MFA candidate at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus. She is a full-time English teacher at The Brooklyn Latin School. Her fiction has previously appeared in Drunken Boat, Hyphen Magazine and CloudCity Press. "And in Your Eyes, it Looks Like … " is her second publication in Cha. [Fiction]
 
Kit Fan
ImageBorn in Hong Kong, Kit Fan now lives in the UK. His first book of poems Paper Scissors Stone won the inaugural International HKU Poetry Prize. You can read some of his poetry in Cha. [Whither Hong Kong?]
 
Lê Đình Nhất-Lang
ImageNhat-Lang Le was born in 1969 in Saigon, emigrated with his family to France in 1983, and moved to the US in 1985. He has a BA in Linguistics and Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He worked for more than a decade as a software programmer, before switching careers to work as a news translator and editor for a Vietnamese media organization based in the Little Saigon area of Southern California. His poems and translations have appeared in the printed magazines The Ky 21, Van Hoc and Van, and the literary e-zines Tien Ve and Da Mau. He has been on Da Mau's editorial staff since 2007. [Poetry]
 
Lu Jin
ImageLu Jin was born in Nanjing, China. She received her secondary and tertiary education in different parts of the world. She now studies English literature in Hong Kong. [Reviews]
 
Lucas Stewart
ImageLucas Stewart spent twelve years collecting memories in Qatar, Iraq, Brunei, Philippines, Indonesia and South Korea before moving to Burma in 2011. He is currently employed as the British Council's literature advisor where he works with former literary prisoners on a project to support freedom of expression in ethnic minority language literature from post-conflict states. Commissioned by English Pen, Swedish Pen, Arts Professional and other publications, he is currently working on a political travelogue charting the effects of democratic and military transition on Burma's writers. [Creative non-fiction]
 
Mags Webster
ImageMags Webster's first book The Weather of Tongues (Sunline Press) won the 2011 Anne Elder Award for best debut collection published in Australia. Her work has been published in various journals and anthologies, most recently in Westerly, Cordite Poetry Review, Rabbit Poetry and Australian Love Poems (2013). Originally from the UK, Webster has homes in Australia and Hong Kong. She is currently completing an MFA in Creative Writing at City University of Hong Kong. Visit her website for more information. [Reviews]
 
Mai Van Phan
ImageBorn in 1955 in Kim Son, Ninh Binh province, Mai Van Phan now lives and writes in Hai Phong City. He is recipient of prestigious literary awards in Vietnam and has published 15 books of poetry. [Poetry]
 
Marco Yan
ImageMarco Yan is a Hong Kong-born poet currently pursuing an MFA degree at New York University. He believes that the great joy of being a city dweller lies in the possibility that anything/anyone could happen. His poems about life in a city have also appeared in Folio, Foothill: A Journal of Poetry, Prairie Schooner and more. [Poetry | Whither Hong Kong?]
 
Margaret Chula
ImageMargaret Chula lived in Japan for twelve years where she taught creative writing at Kyoto universities. Her seven collections of poetry include, most recently, Just This. She has been a featured speaker and workshop leader at writers' conferences and festivals throughout the United States, as well as in Poland, Canada, and Japan. In 2010, she was appointed poet laureate for Friends of Chamber Music, composing poems while listening to concerts. She currently serves as president of the Tanka Society of America. The two poems included in the September 2014 issue of Cha are from her working manuscript White Lotus. Visit her website for more information. [Poetry]
 
Mary Jean Chan
ImageA recent graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Oxford, Mary Jean Chan is passionate about the intersection between politics and poetry, as well as other forms of literary expression. Her work has been published in journals and anthologies such as The Cadaverine, The Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Oxford Cherwell, The Charnel House and In Protest: 150 Poems for Human Rights. A former TEDx speaker, Chan was twice selected as one of Oxford's emerging poetic voices by the Oxford University Poetry Society. She is currently an MA candidate in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. [Whither Hong Kong?]
 
Michael O’Sullivan
ImageMichael O’Sullivan is from Ireland and he teaches literature in Chinese University Hong Kong. He writes short stories, poems and essays and he has published a book on James Joyce and Marcel Proust and a book on Michel Henry. His essays appear in such journals as Mosaic and Parallax. His most recent book is Weakness: A Literary and Philosophical History. (Photo credit: Dan Short) [Reviews | Whither Hong Kong?] [Cha profile]
 
Michael Tsang
ImageMichael Tsang received his BA in English and MPhil in Gender Studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is now reading for a PhD degree at the University of Warwick, specializing in postcolonial English literature in Hong Kong. Language and literature are part of his life. He likes to write stories and poems in his spare time, and is devoted to language learning. His ultimate goal is to learn Tibetan and Finnish. Tsang is a Staff Reviewer for Cha. Visit his Warwick profile for more. [Review 1 | Review 2 | Whither Hong Kong?] [Cha profile]
 
Michelle Tudor
ImageMichelle Tudor is a writer from England. She is an English Literature and Creative Writing graduate whose short stories have been published both online and in print. She has recently completed work on her first novel, based in Japan. You can find other musings at her blog. [Fiction]
 
Miho Kinnas
ImageMiho Kinnas is a Japanese poet writing in English. She holds an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from the City University of Hong Kong. Her first book of poems, Today, Fish Only is due to be published in early 2015 from Math Paper Press of Singapore. She read at NYU Shanghai Literary Reading Series in March 2014 and her current projects include the translation of contemporary Japanese poems. She recently moved from Shanghai to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina in the U.S. (Photograph credit: Fran Gubbey) [Poetry]
 
Nancy Lynée Woo
ImageNancy Lynée Woo is fortunate to have a lovely poetry home in Long Beach, CA with the fine folks of The Poetry Lab. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Subterranean Quarterly, CHEAP POP, Cadence Collective, and Cease, Cows. She is currently working on a collection of poems about her mixed heritage. You can follow her on Twitter @fancifulnance. [Poetry]
 
Natalie Liu
ImageNatalie Liu was born and raised in Hong Kong, and is currently an undergraduate student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong majoring in English. She doesn't have any publications to her name yet, but she's working on it. [Whither Hong Kong?]
 
Neobie Gonzalez
ImageNeobie Gonzalez is from Manila, the Philippines. Her works have appeared in Used Gravitrons, Broke Journal, New Slang, and the anthology A Treat of 100 Short Stories. Her essay "Voices from the Village" won a Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature in 2013. She is also co-editor of Plural Journal. [Poetry]
 
Peter Gordon
ImagePeter Gordon is editor of the Asian Review of Books and publisher of Chameleon Press. [Whither Hong Kong?]
 
Ruth Lee
ImageRuth Lee was born, raised and educated in Hong Kong and graduated with law and business degrees. By trade, she is a general manager in a logistics company (supply chain management professional). Reading literature is a hobby of hers since childhood and she started writing poetry as an amateur about 10 years ago. She took part in the Kubrick Poetry activities and one of her works was on show in its photo/poetry exhibition "If I have time ..." in July 2014. Her goal is to become a more active writer and get published. [Whither Hong Kong?]
 
Shefali Tripathi Mehta
ImageShefali Tripathi Mehta is a Bangalore-based independent writer. She writes interactive e-learning courseware for a living and stories to make living worthwhile. She has worked as sub-editor, ad copywriter, content analyst and marketing communications professional. Her short stories have been published in anthologies and online journals. She is the author of What Were They Thinking!, a book on observational humour and is the co-author and translator of a coffee table book with Gulzar. She also writes on social issues in the Sunday Herald and on disability awareness in journals. Her poems have been published in Muse India and the Reading Hour. Visit her blog for more information. [Poetry]
 
Shirley Geok-lin Lim
ImageShirley Geok-lin Lim is the author of Crossing the Peninsula (Commonwealth Poetry Prize winner and six other volumes of poetry, three collections of short stories, two novels, a children’s novel, Princess Shawl (translated into Chinese, published in Taiwan, 2009); and recently a selected short stories and poetry volume, The Shirley Lim Collection. Her memoir, Among the White Moon Faces, received the American Book Award. She has published two critical studies; edited/co-edited many critical volumes and numerous special issues of journals. The Forbidden Stitch received the 1990 American Book Award. She served as chair of Women’s Studies, UCSB; Chair Professor of English, University of Hong Kong; and currently is Professor of English, University of California, Santa Barbara. Awarded Multiethnic Literatures of the United States (MELUS) 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award, the UCSB Faculty Research Lecture Award, University of Western Australia Distinguished Lecturer award, Fulbright Distinguished Lecturership, and J.T. Stewart Hedgebrook award. Taught at City University of New York, State University of New York, University of Hong Kong, National Institute of Education of Nanyang University, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and National University of Singapore. [Poetry]
 
Sohini Dey
ImageSohini Dey lives in New Delhi where she works as a features writer at Harper’s Bazaar India. She changes cities every few years, prefers writing to speaking, dislikes curios, and hoards books and pirated TV serials. The poems published in the September 2014 issue of Cha are among her first published poems. [Poetry]
 
Stefani Kuo
ImageStefani Kuo is an undergraduate student from Hong Kong at Yale University as an English and Theatre Studies double major. She is a researcher at the Asia Literary Review, the playwright for Common Room, a theatre group at Yale, was the editor-in-chief for her high school art and literary magazine Albany Road, and has attended various writing programs and conferences, such as the Kenyon Review Young Writers' Workshop and the New England Young Writers Conference. Her prose and poetry have been published in all three publications as well as the online literary magazine Barriers and Cha's critique column A Cup of Fine Tea. [Fiction] [Cha profile]
 
Stephanie Han
ImageStephanie Han (MA, MFA) is City University of Hong Kong's first PhD in English literature and has published across the genres. She was awarded the South China Morning Post story prize, the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for fiction, and the Santa Fe Writer's Project fiction award. Her poetry has appeared in DisOrient, The Kyoto Journal, Louisville Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Ampersand Review, and other publications. She has been anthologized in Strange Cargo: Emerging Voices (PEN-West, USA; 2010), Cheers to Muses (Asian American Women Artists; 2007), How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit (Signal 8 Press; 2014), and The Queen of Statue Square (CCC Press; 2014). Her poetry and creative non-fiction is forthcoming in Eleven-Eleven, Great Ocean Quarterly and Tao of Parenthood. She has recently completed a poetry collection entitled Building the Great Wall. Visit her website for more information. [Poetry | Whither Hong Kong?]
 
Sucharita Dutta-Asane
ImageSucharita Dutta-Asane is a writer and independent editor based in Pune. In 2013, she received the inaugural Dastaan Award (Papercuts) for her short story “Rear View”. In 2008, she received the Oxford Bookstores debuting writers' (second) award for her anthology, The Jungle Stories. Her short stories have appeared in various national and international anthologies such as the Africa-Asia anthology Behind the Shadows (2012) and Zubaan Books' Breaking the Bow, an anthology of speculative fiction, Unisun Publications’ anthology Vanilla Desires and APK Publishers' anthology of short stories by Indian women writers titled Ripples. Her articles, book reviews, short stories, and a novella, Petals in the Sun, have been extensively published across e-literary journals including Cha, The Four Quarters Magazine, The Bangalore Review and Out of Print, among others. Besides writing, Dutta-Asane edits fiction and non-fiction manuscripts with independent authors, publishing houses, and literary agencies. [Reviews]
 
Tom Carter
ImageTravel photographer Tom Carter (b. 1973) is the author of the critically acclaimed book CHINA: Portrait of a People and editor of the expat anthology Unsavory Elements. Carter is from San Francisco city and has called China home since 2004. He contributed photographs to Hong Mei’s India travelogue The Farther I Walk, the Closer I Get to Me. [Photography 2]
 
Varsha Saraiya-Shah
ImageVarsha Saraiya-Shah is a first-generation Indian American poet and financial professional who lives and works in Houston, Texas. Her work has appeared in Borderlands, Texas Observer, Mutabilis Press anthologies including Five Inprint Poets, Convergence, and elsewhere. She reads her new work regularly among multi-genre writers at Archway Gallery and ekphrastic poetry at Rice Gallery, invited and inspired by new installations. She has studied with poets in various summer and fall workshops including Houston's Inprint House, New York's Sarah Lawrence College, Squaw Valley Community of Writers in California and Reed College, Oregon. [Poetry]
 
Wendy Gan
ImageWendy Gan teaches at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include Hong Kong cinema, British women's writing from the early twentieth century, and representations of China in American and British middlebrow texts. Her poems have been published in Ariel, Westerly, How2, and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. [Whither Hong Kong?]
 
Wong Leung Wo
ImageWong Leung Wo was born in Hong Kong. He completed his tertiary degrees in the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong Baptist University. He is a poet, writer, scholar, critic, and educator writing in Chinese and is currently an Associate Professor of the Department of Literature and Cultural Studies in Hong Kong Institute of Education. His poems, essays, and short stories have won him many awards, such as the 7th, 8th, and 9th Youth Literary Awards, the 3rd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 11th Awards for Creative Writing in Chinese, the 2nd Hong Kong Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature (Poetry), and the 7th Hong Kong Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature (Fiction). He was the co-founder of We Poetry journal (1996-97) with his students, after his part-time instructorship of a poetry workshop at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in 1995. He was also a co-editor of Huxi Poetry (1996-97). He has often been a member of the judging panels of local literary awards, and his works frequently appear in local literary magazines. His research interests are in modern Chinese literature, contemporary Chinese literature, Hong Kong literature, composition, children’s literature, and pedagogy of literature. Some of his notable poetry collections are Hair Surprise (1986), The Mill in the Fire (1994), An Ode to the Tree Roots (1997), Still Unborn (1999), and Pomelo Lantern (1991). He is the author of the prose collections, Water of Autumn (1991), Between Mountains and Water (2002), and Fish-talk (2008); and the fiction, Curse of the Fish (2002). [Poetry]
 
Yassen Vassilev
ImageYassen Vassilev graduated from the Theatre and Film Academy of Sofia where he lived and worked until recently. He published two poetry collections (Infinity in 2009 and Androgyne in 2011), created numerous spoken word performances based on them and won the award of the audience of the biggest national poetry festival Sofia:Poetics in 2010. His debut play The Walled in Ones won a play development award in 2011, was professionally produced in 2012 and got nominated for Play of the Year in 2013. Its English translation got its first workshop and reading in June 2014 in China. Since the beginning of 2014 Vassilev moved to Shanghai where he was a residence artist at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel and is currently doing a Master in Shanghai Theatre Academy. [Poetry]
 
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