What inspired you to start writing?
I’ve been writing stories since I could write and never stopped, basically. I just got around to actually learning how to revise and submit things to publishing places eventually, but it’s one of those things I think I’d be doing all my life regardless. Just for me.
What inspired you to start writing?
I started to write fiction in 2018. I had moved to a small town. My first drafts of the Nanowrimo novel experiment were cathartic and healing. I wrote my maternal grandmother back to life, and together we got through a hard part of life, a toxic work environment, and becoming a new mother. In 2022, I took an inspiring online writing class called The Art of Fiery Prose with Giulietta Nardone. One of the assignments was submitting short stories to online journals. And I did! And mags published things!
What inspired you to start writing?
Drawing gives me carpal tunnel, so I must externalize my thoughts through other mediums. More importantly, I was first inspired by great stories that kept me reading till the sun came up. I wanted to write like those authors and create exciting worlds and loveable characters.
What inspired you to start writing?
I’ve always just loved creating stories. When I was a child, I would draw my own comics based on things I was a fan of – mostly science fiction shows and movies (shoutout to anyone who remembers the anime epic Robotech). As I got older, I learned to refine this skill in prose, and the creative writing class I took at UC Davis during my senior year was transformational.
What inspired you to start writing?
I’ve written poems since I was eight years old. In third grade, I won third place for a Mother’s Day contest. So, initially, I wrote poems for my mother and stepmother. But it wasn’t until I wrote a poem about childhood trauma for an English class assignment in high school that I connected to writing as a practice to make sense of the most troubling experiences I was facing.
What does it mean to be API/AANHPI?
I suppose I will take a more personal approach to this question, as it is definitely one that has persistently popped up throughout my life. For me, it has always been: what does it mean to be Asian, or more specifically in my case, Chinese? As a child, I was born and spent the early years of my life in China, and even after arriving in Canada,
Christina Sng is the three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Collection of Nightmares, A Collection of Dreamscapes, and Tortured Willows. Her poetry, fiction, essays, and art appear in numerous venues worldwide, including Interstellar Flight Magazine, New Myths, Penumbric, Southwest Review, and The Washington Post.
Photo Credit: Author self-portrait, 2022
Bryan Thao Worra is the author of 10+ books. One of the first Lao Americans to arrive in the US in 1973, and the first Lao American to hold a professional membership in the Horror Writers Association. He holds over 20 national and international awards for his writing and community leadership. He served as the president of the International Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association from 2016-2022. He has presented at the Smithsonian and the 2012 London Summer Games on the role of the imagination and memory in creative writing as a poet and prose writer, focusing on the creative journeys of Southeast Asians, and will discuss his work at the Library of Congress on May 2nd.
What inspired you to start writing?My origin story is probably a very familiar one to most writers. It started early in childhood with a love of books and a reverence for those who created them. Then, in primary school, praise came from teachers for my early efforts at written storytelling. High school hit, then adulthood, and somewhere along the line, I shelved the childhood dream of becoming a writer. I picked it up again when my first child started school and I undertook online study to earn a Creative Writing Diploma, naively thinking I might have time to devote to learning the craft (three years and two more children later, I graduated….)
L CHAN hails from Singapore. He spends most of his time wrangling a team of two dogs, Mr Luka and Mr Telly. His work has appeared in places like Clarkesworld, Translunar Travellers Lounge, Podcastle, the Dark and he was a finalist for the 2020 Eugie Foster Memorial Award. He tweets inordinately @lchanwrites and can be found on the web at https://lchanwrites.wordpress.com/
Maria Dong is the author of Liar, Dreamer, Thief. Her short fiction, articles, and poetry have been published in dozens of magazines, like the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Lightspeed, Augur, Nightmare, Khoreo, Fantasy, Apex, and Apparition Literary Magazine. She is represented by Amy Bishop at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.
Dan Rabarts (Ngati Porou) is an award-winning author and editor living in Porirua, Aotearoa New Zealand. He is a four-time recipient of New Zealand’s Sir Julius Vogel Award and three-time winner of the Australian Shadows Award.
Photo by Romke Hoogwaerts.
Catherine Yu writes dark speculative fiction. She was born in Nanjing and is now based in New York. She is a graduate of Odyssey Writing Workshop. Direwood is her debut novel from Page Street Publishing. Helga, a YA Frankenstein reimagining, is coming out in 2024. She can be found at catherineyuwrites.com.
Angela Liu is a Chinese American writer from NYC. She studied East Asian Studies at New York University and researched mixed reality at Keio University’s Graduate School of Media Design in Japan, with a focus on new narrative platforms and tangible interfaces for remote communication. She now works in IT consulting and Japanese-to-English translation while raising a monster-obsessed toddler. Her stories and poetry are published/forthcoming in Strange Horizons, The Dark, Nightmare Magazine, Clarkesworld, Cast of Wonders, Fusion Fragment, and Dark Matter Magazine among others. Check out more of her work at liu-angela.com or find her on Twitter/Instagram: @liu_angela
Kelsea Yu is a Taiwanese Chinese American writer who is eternally enthusiastic about sharks and appreciates a good ghost story. Her short stories and essays appear in magazines such as Fantasy, PseudoPod, and Reckoning, and in various anthologies. Her novella Bound Feet is published with Cemetery Gates Media, and her debut novel It’s Only a Game is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Children’s in 2024. Kelsea lives with her husband, children, and a pile of art supplies in the Pacific Northwest. Find her on Instagram and Twitter as @anovelescape or visit her website kelseayu.com.
Ashley Deng is a Canadian-born Chinese-Jamaican author of dark fantasy and horror. She holds a BSc in biochemistry, specializing her studies toward making accessible the often-cryptic world of science and medicine. When not writing, she is a hobbyist medical/scientific illustrator and spends her spare time overthinking society and culture. Her work has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Augur Magazine, and others. Her climate horror novella, Dehiscent, is available August 2023 from Tenebrous Press. You can find her at ashedeng.ca or on various social media as @ashesandmochi and @baroqueintentions.
Hannah Yang is a Chinese-American speculative fiction author who writes about all things strange and surreal. Her work has appeared in Apex Magazine, The Dark Magazine, and Nightmare Magazine, among other places. Her short story “Eating Bitterness” was a finalist for the 2021 Ladies of Horror Fiction Awards.
Simo Srinivas lives in Colorado with their spouse and two senior, standard-issue tabby cats. Their horror fiction has appeared in Dark Matter Presents: MONSTROUS FUTURES, Deathcap & Hemlock, and The Archive of the Odd, among others. When not writing about all things weird and queer, Simo can be found on the trail intently counting pikas. You can also find them online at www.srinivassimo.com and on Twitter and Instagram: @srinivassimo.
K.P. KULSKI is a Hawaii-born Korean-American author, historian, and career vampire of patriarchal tears. Channeling a lifelong obsession with history and the morose, she’s managed to birth the gothic horror novel Fairest Flesh and novella House of Pungsu. She bartered nine years of her life to the U.S. Navy and Air Force for food and later taught college history to a captive audience. Trapped by a force field, she currently resides in the woods of Northeast Ohio where she (probably) brews potions and talks to ghosts. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter: @garnetonwinter or visit garnetonwinter.com.
Wen Wen Yang is a first-generation Chinese American from the Bronx, New York. She graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University with a degree in English and creative writing. She listens to audiobooks at three-times speed, talks almost as fast, and misses dependable public transportation. You can find her short fiction in Fantasy Magazine, Zooscape, and more. An up-to-date bibliography is on WenWenWrites.com.
