Contributors / November 2009 (Issue 9)


Guest Editors
ImageJonathan Mendelsohn helped select the prose. See his Cha profile.

ImageReid Mitchell helped select the poetry. See his Cha profile


 
Ankur Agarwal
ImageAnkur Agarwal is from India. His poetry has been published before (or due to be published) in Paper Wall, Barnwood Poetry Magazine, Other Poetry, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Halfway Down the Stairs, among others, and his haiku in A Handful of Stones. He works as a freelance editor for STM and humanities books, and loves traveling. He also reviews Indian and European cinema here. [Read]
 
Viona Au Yeung
ImageViona is a translator, teacher, and independent researcher in Romanticism. She is currently working on her first anthology and pursuing painting as a hobby. [Read]
 
Steve Ausherman
ImageSteve Ausherman is a photographer, poet, fly fisherman, traveller, potter and high school fine arts instructor who lives in New Mexico, USA. His photos have recently appeared in the journals 580 Split, The South Loop Review and Cha (Issue #8). As well, his poetry has recently appeared in The Aurorean, THE Magazine, Keyhole, Main Channel Voices, Avocet, and the online journal Roadkill Zen. He has been teaching photography to high school students for the past eleven years and spends his summers traveling with his wife Denise. [View]
 
Iain S. Baird
ImageIain S. Baird was nominated for a 2007 Pushcart Prize for Best Short Story. He also won the 2006 William March Award for Best Short Story from the University of South Alabama and was a 2007 finalist for the William Wisdom Short Story Award, William Faulkner Festival. He has been published in The Timber Creek Review, Oracle, Louisiana: In Words, The Briar Cliff Review, The Berkshire Review, among others, and is listed in the Poets & Writers National Directory. He spent his teenage years in India during the late 1950s through early 1960s. He currently splits his time between Annapolis, Maryland, the Florida Panhandle, and New Orleans. [Read]
 
Bob Bradshaw
ImageBob Bradshaw [profile] hails from Florida, where he had the great pleasure of taking classes under novelist Wyatt Wyatt and poet David Posner. He defected from Florida decades ago and now lives in California. Bradshaw has published in Eclectica, Apple Valley Review, Mississippi Review, Paumonok Review, Pedestal Magazine, Loch Raven Review, and many other publications. He is currently working on a poetry manuscript titled Van Gogh in Love. Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . [Read]
 
Caroline Bird
ImageCaroline Bird was born in 1986 and grew up in Leeds before moving to London in 2001. She is currently studying English Literature at Oxford University. Bird was recently shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize (2008), the youngest to date on the list at 22. She was also a winner of the Poetry London Competition (2007), the Peterloo Poetry Competition for three years running (2004, 2003 and 2002), a major Eric Gregory Award (2002) and the Foyles Young Poet of the Year Award (1999, 2000). Bird has had two collections of poetry published by Carcanet Press, Looking Through Letterboxes (2002) and Trouble Came to the Turnip (2006). A third collection, Watering Can, also from Carcanet Press, is due out this month (November 2009). [Read]
 
Drew Calvert
ImageDrew Calvert was born in the U.S. and raised in Singapore. After working for a brief time as a reporter in central Pennsylvania and as a staff writer for a law magazine in Hong Kong, he completed a Master’s degree in English literature and has since worked as a teacher and freelance writer. He currently lives in Beijing, where he teaches English and English literature at the China University of Geosciences. [Read]
 
Kevin Chan
ImageKevin Chan is a translator born in Shanghai but grew up in Hong Kong, where he currently lives. He considers translation a fitting career for him given his background from two of China's most westernized cities, enthusiasm for language, and incredible nerdiness. Most importantly, however, he has an intense interest in intercultural comparison, and how the process of translation reveals finer similarities and differences between cultures. Chan is a beginner in photography, having just switched from camera phone to DSLR, but is already hooked on his new hobby. His photography has previously been published in Issue #7 of Cha. [View]
 
Stuart Christie
ImageStuart Christie has been living and teaching in Hong Kong since 1999. His poems have appeared most recently in the Fifty/Fifty: New Hong Kong Writing (Haven Books, 2007) and Our Common Sufferings: World Poets in Memoriam 2008 Sichuan Earthquake (Shanghai Foreign Language Press, 2008) anthologies. [Read]
 
Melody S. Gee
ImageMelody S. Gee lives in St. Louis, MO and teaches writing at Southwestern Illinois College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Blackbird, Crab Orchard Review, The Bitter Oleander, The Greensboro Review, Mississippi Review, and The Spoon River Poetry Review, among others. In 2008, she received the Robert Watson Prize for Poetry, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and was a Kundiman Asian American poetry retreat fellow. [Read]
 
Bernard Henrie
ImageBernard Henrie administered social service programs in Los Angeles County for 20 years before starting his own currency trading business. His publication credits include MiPOesias, Shampoo, Boston Literary Magazine, APT and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. Four of his poems were anthologized in The Wild Poetry Anthology and The Pirated Poetry Anthology published by Farfalla Press. Mark Dotty selected his poem as second best for the year in the Interboard Poetry Competition (IBPC) for 2007. He is a foreign film buff. [Read]
 
Arlene Kim
ImageArlene Kim is a second-generation Korean-American who grew up on the east coast of the US and now lives and writes on the west coast. She received a BA in literature from Brown University and an MFA in poetry from the University of Minnesota where her work won the Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize. Her first collection of poems is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in Spring 2011. She is currently researching, writing, and experimenting with poetry/comics hybrids for a new collection based on a filicide that occurred in the eighteenth-century royal court of Korea. She also reads for the DMQ Review as an associate editor. [Read]
 
Lillian Kwok
ImageLillian Kwok is a second-generation Chinese American whose parents immigrated from Hong Kong and Taiwan. She was raised in southeastern Pennsylvania, and recently graduated magna cum laude from Pepperdine University where she studied English literature and Spanish. She is now teaching English in Yilan County, Taiwan on a Fulbright grant. Her poetry has previously been published in Issue #8 of Cha. [Read]
 
Mark Malby
ImageMark Malby was born on the shores of the Great Lakes and spent his formative years traipsing through the forests of Canada, canoeing on its waters and generally messing about. He holds two degrees from the University of British Columbia and another from the University of Hong Kong, and has lived and worked in such farflung locales as Toronto, Vancouver, London, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Over the years he has played the roles of tree-planter, shop proprietor, harbourmaster, high school science teacher, journalist, editor, and university lecturer. Currently he works as an executive for a global publishing company, where he continues to dabble in writing and photography. His photography has previously been published in Issue #2 of Cha. [View]
 
Edgar Y.B. Mao
ImageEdgar Y.B. Mao was born on 21st March, 1986, in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China. He spent his pre-college years in Guangzhou, and in the year 2004 went to Peking University where, after four years of study, he was awarded a B.A degree in English Language and Literature. He is currently enrolled in an M.Phil programme in English (Literary Studies) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is interested in a variety of literature-related topics, including Elizabethan drama and modern drama, modern poetry (both in English and Chinese), 19th and 20th century short stories, as well as creative writing in poetry and drama. [Read]
 
Reid Mitchell
ImageReid Mitchell is consulting editor of Cha. [Read]
 
Moira Moody
ImageOriginally from Philadelphia, Moira Moody is an MFA student at Rutgers University in Newark, where she writes fiction and teaches Composition. She previously studied at the University of Pennsylvania, earning her B.A. in English Literature in 2006. Her fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in The Battered Suitcase, The Pennsylvania Gazette, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. [Read]
 
Aryanil Mukherjee
ImageAryanil Mukherjee is a bilingual poet, translator and editor who grew up in Kolkata, India. He has authored eight books of poetry and essays in two languages. Awarded the Kabita Pakkhik Samman (Poetry Fortnightly Honor) for 2007, his recent English work has appeared in The Literary Review, Open Spaces, Jacket, Helix, Drunken Boat and Big Bridge. Recent Spanish translations have appeared in El Invisible Anillo. His work has featured in many anthologies, some recentmost include the Indian Poetry issue of TLR, Indivisible – a shortly forthcoming anthology of South Asian American poetry from U. Arkansas Press & La Poesia Bengalí – a forthcoming Spanish anthology of contemporary Bengali poetry from Calambur Press, Madrid. Aryanil edits KAURAB, a Bangla parallel literary magazine published since 1970. He works as an engineering mathematician and lives in Cincinnati, USA. [Read]
 
Kristine Ong Muslim
ImageKristine Ong Muslim's work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications worldwide, including Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal, Beeswax Magazine Boxcar Poetry Review, Fifth Wednesday, GlassFire Magazine, Grasslimb, Iodine Poetry Journal, Knockout, Narrative Magazine, New Madrid, Other Poetry, Otoliths, Ottawa Arts Review, Pank, Quay, Riddle Fence, The Pedestal Magazine, and T-Zero. She has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and twice for the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Rhysling Award. Her publication credits can be viewed here. [Read]
 
Priyadarshi Patnaik
ImagePriyadarshi Patnaik (b. 1969) is a creative writer, painter, translator and photographer. A number of his poems and short-fiction have appeared in various journals outside and in India including Ariel, Oyster Boy Review, Hudson View, Melic Review, Still, Toronto Review, Kavya Bharati, Indian Literature and Muse India. His paintings and sketches have also appeared in a number of journals. In photography Patnaik loves to experiment with black & white images. "Flight of Toads" was taken when the toads, resting on the sandbank, were disturbed by the sound of feet and jumped into the water at sunset. [View]
 
Craig Santos Perez
ImageCraig Santos Perez is a co-founder of Achiote Press and author of from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008). His poetry, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared in New American Writing, Pleiades, The Denver Quarterly, The Colorado Review, and ZYZZYVA, among others. [Read]
 
Donna Pucciani
ImageDonna Pucciani has published approximately three hundred poems in the US and UK, in such journals as International Poetry Review, Spoon River Poetry, Journal of the American Medical Association, and The Pedestal. Her collections of poetry include The Other Side of Thunder, Jumping Off the Train (Orchard House Press), and Chasing the Saints (Virtual Artists Collective). She has won awards from the Illinois Arts Council and the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, among others, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She currently serves as Vice President of the Poets' Club of Chicago. [Read]
 
Kate Rogers

Image Kathryn (Kate) Rogers has twice been short-listed for the Winston Collins Best Canadian Poem Prize by Descant Magazine (Toronto) in January 2008 and February 2009. Her poetry, essays and reviews have been published in anthologies and literary magazines in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Canada, the U.S. and the UK. They have appeared in the Asia Literary Review, Many Mountains Moving, Dimsum, Pressed, The New Quarterly, Contemporary Verse II, Canadian Woman Studies, The Mad Woman in the Academy andOrbis International. Her work also appeared in the anthology, We Who Can Fly: Poems, Essays and Memories in Honour of Adele Wiseman. Rogers is co-editor of the international women's poetry anthology Not A Muse (Haven Books, Hong Kong, March 2009); her poetry collection,Painting the Borrowed House, debuted at the Man Hong Kong Literary Festival in March 2008, is available on Amazon.com and from Proverse, Hong Kong. Originally from Toronto, Rogers has been teaching writing, literature an English for Academic and Professional Purposes for colleges and universities in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan for the past ten years. A bi-lingual Chinese and English collection of her essays about conservation, bird watching and culture in Taiwan, The Swallows' Return, was published in June 2006. Rogers currently teaches in the Division of Language Studies at the Community College of City University in Hong Kong. [Read] [Cha profile]

 
Vera Schwarcz
ImageBorn in Romania, Vera Schwarcz is a well known poet and a historian. She is the author of eight books on Chinese and Jewish history including the prize-winning Bridge Across Broken Time: Chinese and Jewish Cultural Memory (1999) and most recently, Place and Memory in Singing Crane Garden (2008). She has also written four books of poetry including Brief Rest in the Garden of Flourishing Grace (2009) and Chisel of Remembrance (2009). Currently, Schwarcz is the Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Wesleyan. Her work won a Guggenheim Fellowship and is featured on the web @: between2walls.com. [Read]
 
Kirpal Singh
ImageKirpal Singh is the Director of the Wee Kim Wee Centre at the Singapore Management University where he now teaches Creative Writing. Singh is internationally known for his strong views and for his strong poetry and fiction. He is the founding General Editor of the Interlogue: Studies In Singapore Literature series and sits on the advisory/editotrial boards of several major international journals. He is the first non-American to be elected to the Board of the American Creativity Association where he is now Vice-President. These days Singh is better known as a creativity guru and a futurist giving advice and coaching to key leaders and management players around the world. His poetry and fiction have been the subject of critical scrutiny for more than thiry years now and he remains a firm, major voice in the global literary landscape. [Read]
 
Lee Minh Sloca
ImageLee Minh Sloca was born in Vietnam, from which he escaped two weeks prior to its collapse. He graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a major in Psychology. After college, he worked for fourteen years with special needs children in a variety of mental health and educational facilities. Seeking to expand his horizons, he shifted his focus to poetry and painting. After campaigning for Obama in the ’08 election, he is currently seeking work that is compatible with the President's philosophy of community. Lee lives in Los Angeles, CA. [Read]
 
C. P. Stewart
ImageC. P. Stewart lives with his family in North Yorkshire. Previously singer/songwriter with the cult band Laughing Gravy, his work has been widely published in England , Canada , Australia and the United States. He is currently the poetry editor for Sotto Voce arts and literary magazine. His first collection of poetry Taking it In is published by Koo Poetry Press this month (November 2009). [Read]
 
Ira Sukrungruang
ImageIra Sukrungruang's poetry has appeared in North American Review, Witness, The Sun, and numerous other literary journals. He co-edited literary anthologies about the fat experience: What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology and Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology. His memoir Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy is forthcoming form University of Missouri Press. He is the creative nonfiction editor of Sweet: A Literary Confection and teaches creative writing at University of South Florida. [Read]
 
Phoebe Tsang

Image Phoebe Tsang was born in Hong Kong, grew up in England and currently resides in Canada. She is the author of the poetry collection Contents of a Mermaid’s Purse (Tightrope Books, 2009). Phoebe's poetry can be found in the anthologies Garden Variety (Quattro Books) and Not a Muse (Haven Books). Journal credits include Asia Literary Review (Hong Kong), Atlas02 (UK & India), Cha (Hong Kong), Brand (UK), Room and Freefall (Canada). Her chapbooks are Solitaires (Lyricalmyrical Press, 2006) and To Kiss the Ground (Press On! 2007). A professional violinist, she is a multi-genre artist who holds a BSc in Architecture from the University of London. Visit her website for more details. [Read]

 
Alice Tsay
ImageAlice Tsay was formerly an English teacher in Hong Kong. She now writes from her new home in Oxford, England. This is the second time Tsay contributes reviews to Cha. [Read]
 
Anna Yin
ImageAnna Yin was born in China; she immigrated to Canada in 1999. She has more than 80 poems published internationally. In 2005, Yin received the Ted Plantos Memorial Award and her poem "Toronto, No More Weeping" was aired on CBC Radio. She is a member of The Ontario Poetry Society and is Director of the Chinese Cultural Federation of North America. Yin was selected as CFP Feature Poet for February (2006) by Canadian Federation of Poets. Her poems and ten translation works were selected for the textbook of Canada Study for international students by Humber College in 2007. Visit her website for more details. [Read]
 
Yong Shu Hoong
ImageBorn in 1966, Yong Shu Hoong has published three books of poetry, including Frottage (2005), which won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2006. His poems have been included in literary journals, as well as anthologies like Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (W.W. Norton, 2008). A freelance journalist, he has written for publications like The Straits Times, My Paper and South China Morning Post. His soon-to-be-published collection of poems is entitled From within the Marrow. (Photo credit: David Liew) [Read]
 
Website © Cha: An Asian Literary Journal 2007-2018
ISSN 1999-5032
All poems, stories and other contributions copyright to their respective authors unless otherwise noted.