Ricepaper

09/04/2024

An interview with two Asian Canadian writers Wayne Ng George Lee Law Corp. who share how their ethnicity, immigrant experiences, backgrounds, and experiences inform their own writing https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2024/09/17470/

09/04/2024

“The Garden, Echoes” by Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li. Vivian is a q***r and neurodivergent 1.5-generation Chinese-Canadian immigrant writer, director, and interdisciplinary artist, with works published in The Fiddlehead, The Massachusetts Review, and The New Quarterly, among others. The author of 'Someday I Promise, I’ll Love You '(845 Press), and a Banff Centre alumnus in poetry, she was Longlisted for the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize. She is a recent MFA graduate from the UBC School of Creative Writing, and will be looking for a home for her debut experimental novel.

i smooth river leads to quiet winter dust on my fingers frozen, with stars in water, lantern fish in the wind. I’ve longed for herons in my sleep, jade water in trembling eyes, for mountains to retire on, cranes crooning a monsoon song. In the garden, across generations, stones weigh us to the ear...

08/08/2024

Read our latest interview with Teochew-Chinese and Persian writer Sahar Golshan, author of the picture book, "So Loud!" published in 2024 with Annick Press, and illustrated by Shiva Delsooz

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2024/08/sumaiya-matin-interviews-sahar-golshan-author-of-so-loud/

07/08/2024

Congratulations to Ricepaper's Literary Editor, Jinwoo Park! Jinwoo novel "Oxford Soju Club" is set to be published by Dundurn Press in September 2025. Jinwoo is a Korean Canadian writer based in Montreal, and completed his Master’s in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. He is a Korean-English translator, receiving the LTI Korea Translation Award for Aspiring Translators.

In 2020, he won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers’ Award for his first manuscript, "Oxford Soju Club."
https://www.jinwoo-park.com/

07/08/2024

2024 Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Recognition Award winner Allan Cho http://asiancanadianwriters.ca/2024/06/2024-vancouver-asian-heritage-month.html

06/03/2024

“I am Wonder Woman” by Joylyn Chai (illustration by Katya Roxas)

The first television my parents bought was a big box with four elegantly tapered legs. For many years we didn’t have cable, but by turning a stiff k**b on the front of the box, we could sometimes tune into two stations. Many of my most cherished childhood memories are of watching television–even...

05/20/2024

LiterASIAN Toronto 2024 event is being hosted next week, Wed, May 22 University of Toronto East Asian Library. More info and free registration: https://canadianauthors.org/toronto/events/

04/21/2024

Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio is a Filipina-Canadian author, community worker, speaker, tour guide in Toronto’s Little Manila, and the founder of “Filipino Talks”– an initiative that builds bridges between Canadian educators and Filipino families.

Jennilee has attended the Humber Writing Workshop at the IFOA and Creative Writing by Correspondence at the Humber School for Writers, and the Emerging Writers Intensive: First Chapter Novel program at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Her debut novel, Reuniting with Strangers (Douglas & McIntyre), was longlisted for Canada Reads 2024, named one of CBC’s Best Books of 2023, and was a finalist for the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award. Her work has been published in Geist, Magdaragat: An Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing (Cormorant Books), Changing the Face of Canadian Literature (Guernica Editions), TAYO Literary Magazine, The Philippine Reporter, and more. Born and raised in Sarnia, Ontario, she is now based in Toronto.

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2024/03/interview-with-jennilee-austria-bonifacio/

Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio is a Filipina-Canadian author, community worker, speaker, tour guide in Toronto’s Little Manila, and the founder of “Filipino Talks”– an initiative that builds bridges between Canadian educators and Filipino families. Jennilee has attende...

04/21/2024

Lindsay Wong is the author of the critically acclaimed, award-winning, and bestselling memoir The Woo-Woo, which was a finalist for Canada Reads 2019. She has written a YA novel entitled My Summer of Love and Misfortune. Wong holds a BFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and an MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia University. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Winnipeg.

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2024/03/interview-with-lindsay-wong-2/

Lindsay Wong is the author of the critically acclaimed, award-winning, and bestselling memoir The Woo-Woo, which was a finalist for Canada Reads 2019. She has written a YA novel entitled My Summer of Love and Misfortune. Wong holds a BFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia an...

04/21/2024

Joy Kogawa is best known as the author of Obasan (1981), which is based on Joy and her family’s forced relocation from Vancouver during the Second World War when she was six years old. Joy’s other books for adults include Itsuka (1992, published as Emily Kato in 2005), The Rain Ascends (1995), and Gently to Nagasaki (2016). Her works for children are Naomi’s Road (1986, 2005) and Naomi’s Tree (2009). Since 1967, Joy has also published several poetry collections, including A Choice of Dreams (1974), Jericho Road (1977), and A Garden of Anchors (2003). Among her many honours, Joy has received an Order of Canada (1986), an Order of British Columbia (2006), and, from the Japanese Government, an Order of the Rising Sun (2010) for “her contribution to the understanding and preservation of Japanese Canadian history.”

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2024/03/interview-with-joy-kogawa/

Joy Kogawa is best known as the author of Obasan (1981), which is based on Joy and her family’s forced relocation from Vancouver during the Second World War when she was six years old. Joy’s other books for adults include Itsuka (1992, published as Emily Kato in 2005), The Rain Ascends (1995), a...

04/21/2024

Angie Wong is a second-generation Chinese person born in Canada. She is a scholar of the Humanities, teaching across the interdisciplinary fields of Settler Colonial, General, Social Justice, and Postcolonial Studies. Angie is a full-time Senior Consultant on Indigenous Health innovation and research with Alberta’s provincial healthcare system and an active independent community researcher.

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2024/03/interview-with-angie-wong/

Angie Wong is a second-generation Chinese person born in Canada. She is a scholar of the Humanities, teaching across the interdisciplinary fields of Settler Colonial, General, Social Justice, and Postcolonial Studies. Angie is a full-time Senior Consultant on Indigenous Health innovation and researc...

04/21/2024

Ujjal Dosanjh was born in a village of India’s rural Punjab in 1946, mere months before the midnight of India’s independence in 1947. Ujjal migrated to Britain in 1964 where he shunted trains in the British Rail goods yard in Derby, made crayons in a Bedford factory, worked in a car parts plant in Letchworth and helped edit a Punjabi weekly in London while immersed in reading and learning to speak English listening to BBC One. A lifelong activist for social and economic justice, Ujjal campaigned for better legal rights for farm and domestic workers, practiced law and jumped into electoral politics becoming a BC MLA, Attorney General and Premier and subsequently a member of parliament and Minister of Health for Canada.

Retiring in 2011, he wrote his autobiography Journey After Midnight published in 2016- it made BC’s Bestseller list for several weeks—before turning to fiction to write stories that he had encountered in his life some of which had travelled with him. Living in Vancouver since 1968, all his Canadian life, he enjoys gardening, walking, writing and spending time with his six grandchildren. Ujjal’s debut novel, The Past Is Never Dead, set in Banjhan, Punjab and in Bedford, England in the British Midlands of the mid-20th century, published by Speaking Tiger in India, delves into the life of an untouchable Punjabi lad who immigrates to England and how the stranglehold of the caste system travels and remains with him as he fights for equality in Britain.

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2024/03/ujjal/

Ujjal Dosanjh was born in a village of India’s rural Punjab in 1946, mere months before the midnight of India’s independence in 1947. Ujjal migrated to Britain in 1964 where he shunted trains in the British Rail goods yard in Derby, made crayons in a Bedford factory, worked in a car parts plant ...

04/21/2024

Keiko Honda has worked in academia for over 10 years in the public health field in the US and internationally. She is now running her non-profit, Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society, to link her passion and experience to building healthy and more resilient communities.

Keiko completed a Doctorate in Public Health at NYU and a post-doctoral fellowship in Cancer Epidemiology at Columbia University where she worked as a research scientist before she moved to Vancouver in 2009. She is currently teaching a course, Social Artistry Through Co-Creation at the SFU Continuing Studies to shed light on the shared roots of artistic development and systems change to create more possibilities in our community.

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2024/03/keiko/

Keiko Honda has worked in academia for over 10 years in the public health field in the US and internationally. She is now running her non-profit, Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society, to link her passion and experience to building healthy and more resilient communities. Keiko completed a Doctorate in P...

04/19/2024

Robina Nguyen (she/her) is a Vietnamese-Canadian student and freelance writer based in Toronto. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Shameless Magazine, Blue Marble Review, West End Phoenix, HaluHalo Journal and Ambré Magazine, among others.

Read “mekong woman” in Ricepaper

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2024/01/mekong-woman-by-robina-nguyen/

04/18/2024

Vivian Jung, a trailblazing educator, was born in Merritt, BC, in 1924. Breaking barriers, she became the first Chinese-Canadian teacher hired by the Vancouver School Board. However, her journey was marked by discrimination. In the early 1940s, as part of her teacher training, Vivian needed a “swimming lifesaver certificate,” but Vancouver’s public pools were off-limits to non-white individuals.

Tecumseh Elementary School is organizing a special commemoration of Vivian Jung this year and next, including commissioning a mural, and setting up a Vivian Jung Award. The grade 5/6 class of teacher Thomas Aaron Larson will soon be publishing a poetry chapbook with poems generated with the assistance of Vancouver’s 6th Poet Laureate, Fiona Tinwei Lam. Tecumseh Elementary School has set up a page for more information and wishes to reach out to people who may have known or been taught by Vivian

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2024/04/tecumseh/

12/04/2023

“Pig’s Head” by Wan Phing Lim. Wan Phing Lim was born to Malaysian parents in 1986 in Butterworth, Penang. Her short stories have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in the UK, USA, Canada, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia. She lives in Penang and ‘Two Figures in a Car’ (Penguin SEA, 2021) is her first short story collection.

Illustration by Lay Hoon, aka Arty Guava. Lay Hoon is an Illustrator and Graphic Designer based in Vancouver. She grew up in Malaysia and spent most of her adult life in Singapore before moving to Canada. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Bioengineering but chose to make a career switch after about 1 year of working in the field. Art and Design have always been her calling. She is passionate about culture, people and nature and how these themes interact with each other.

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2023/09/pigs-head-by-wan-phing-lim/

11/30/2023

"Milk Fruit" is a new short story by Callen S. Sor. Callen is an American-Canadian physician of Cambodian origin. He and his family lived through the Khmer Rouge genocidal regime (1975-1979), after which they immigrated as refugees to the US and Canada. His background as a refugee and in medicine informs his writing. His aim is to explore the hidden layers of human existence in society.

Illustration by Andrew Szeri, who paints in watercolour when it rains, in Vancouver.

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2023/11/milk-fruit-by-callen-s-sor/

11/28/2023

Hakka Matriarchal ThradsWearing and Weaving Hakka Roots: An Interview with Nicole Lau, by writer Wayne Ng (author of Johnny's Letters).

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2023/11/hakka-matriarchal-thradswearing-and-weaving-hakka-roots-an-interview-with-nicole-lau/

11/23/2023

“The Immigrant’s Could Have Been: On Celine Song’s Past Lives” by Vinh Nguyen

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2023/11/the-immigrants-could-have-been-on-celine-songs-past-lives-by-vinh-nguyen/

11/18/2023

Abigail Hing Wen is the New York Times bestselling author of Loveboat, Taipei, which is being adapted for film. She holds a BA from Harvard, a JD from Columbia Law School, and an MFA from the Vermont School of Fine Arts, and, like some of her characters, is obsessed with musicals and dancing. When she’s not writing stories or listening to her favourite scores, she is busy working in artificial intelligence in Silicon Valley, where she lives with her family.

Recently, Ricepaper Deputy Editor JF Garrard caught up with her to ask her about the Loveboat series and was surprised to find out they both attended Loveboat in Taiwan!

Read this interview with Loveboat series author Abigail Hing Wen.

Abigail Hing Wen is the New York Times bestselling author of Loveboat, Taipei, which is being adapted for film. She holds a BA from Harvard, a JD from Columbia Law School, and an MFA from the Vermont School of Fine Arts, and, like some of her characters, is obsessed with musicals and dancing. When s...

09/12/2023

“Inner City II” by Janet-Rose Nguyen and illustration by Christina Tran

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2023/09/inner-city-ii-by-janet-rose-nguyen/