For Immediate Release - Ricepaper's latest anthology Currents

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Since its transformation into a digital magazine, the pioneering Asian Canadian magazine Ricepaper has returned with the first of many annual anthologies. Currents: A Ricepaper Anthology, dedicated to the late Jim Wong-Chu, features 25 diverse new voices from Canada and beyond as they explore the realities of being both Asian and Canadian. Among its contributors include internationally published writers like Anna Wang Yuan and Zeng Xiaowen, literary editors Do Nguyen Mai and Jasmine Gui, Journey-prize nominated author Céline Chuang, and Governor-General’s finalist Benjamin Hertwig.

With this new anthology Ricepaper plans to continue providing a place for minority voices while straddling the lines between print and digital media. This flexibility allows experimentation with new content and styles including original artwork, podcasts, and photo essays. It was made possible by generous supporters and donors through a Kickstarter campaign and goes to show how Ricepaper’s roots in activism and the community when it first started in 1994. Its commitment to diversity sees stories from not just the Lower Mainland, but also Interior BC, Eastern Canada, and abroad.

The book is now available online via PayPal and can be purchased in selected bookstores in Vancouver.

Details:

Publisher: Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop

Length: 157 pages

Price: $25

Contributors: Aaron Tang Aileen Santos Anna Wang Yuan Benjamin Hertwig Carousel Calvo Céline Chuang Cheonhak Kwon John Mokrynskyj (Translator) Hana Kim (Trans.) Do Nguyen Mai Dung Kai-cheung Nick Stember (Trans.) Hannah Polinski Emi Kodama Frances Du Helen Tran Jane Aiko Komori Jasmine Gui JF Garrard Joanne Leow Kawai Shen Li Charmaine Anne Linda Nguyen Lisa Zhang Mary Chen Raine Ling Stanford Cheung Zeng Xiaowen Alison Bailey (Trans.).

Editors: Karla Comanda Leila Lee William Tham

Artwork: Priscilla Yu

Layout: Keyan Zhang

2017 Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award - Congratulations to Karla Comanda

The Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop (ACWW) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2017 Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award for poetry.   Congratulations to Karla Comanda.  Her highly accomplished poetry "salvages family memorabilia" to unpack the complex layers of Filipino Canadian immigrant experiences. With transnational scope, she explores the fraught lines of kinship, ethnic divisions, language, politics, religion, and food. These poems traverse cities, countries, and oceans. This collection is remarkable for its well-crafted and fresh poetic language, and its courageous drive to confront the abusive legacy of the American and Japanese occupation, including the issue of Comfort Women. 

The jury consists of Fiona Lam, an award winning poet, essayist, editor, and creative writing teacher; Yilin Wang, a fiction writer, poet, and journalist who is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at UBC -- she is also the Poetry Editor at RIcepaper Magazine, and a member of Room Magazine's Editorial Collective; and Dr. Glenn Deer, who teaches Canadian Literature and Asian Canadian Studies at UBC, and has been a past jury member for the ACWW.

LiterASIAN is just 60 days away!

[Announcement] Call for Submissions for the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award 2018

Remembering Jim Wong-Chu: Thank You from the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop Society (1949-2017)

ACWW'S early days Rick Shiomi, Robert Kikuchi, Sammi Yakima to, David Henry Hwang, Jim WongChu #1980 #pioneers.

Born in Hong Kong in 1949, and raised in Canada as a paper son, Jim Wong-Chu is known as a pioneer of the Asian Canadian literary movement. A poet, editor and historian Jim Wong-Chu is among the writers of Asian descent to question the Canadian literary establishment at the time that was devoid of diversity.  Without role models or any blueprint, Jim and fellow like-minded activists such as Sean Gunn, Sharon Lee and Paul Yee began to experiment with different forms of fiction and decided to not only get published but also form informal writing networks to encourage other Asian Canadians to hone their craft.

An idea for an Asian Canadian literary anthology thus germinated in the 1970s, when Jim Wong-Chu and a group of young Asian Canadians began to explore their identities. That exploration took them back to their roots and ignited a desire to express who they were as Canadians of Asian descent.   At a time when Canada Council began to open up new funding to independent publishers, it was timely for these new Asian Canadian activists to step into the realm of creative writing.  It was timely.  Lacking voice from the Asian Canadian communities, an anthology was published, called Inalienable Rice: A Chinese and Japanese Anthology (1979,) is groundbreaking as it was the first anthology entirely comprised of Canadian writers of Asian descent.

Fresh from his UBC Creative Writing courses, Jim Wong-Chu was discovered by a publisher, who encouraged him to publish his UBC compilation of poems into Chinatown Ghosts (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1986) and is the first poetry book by an Asian Canadian writer.  It was a coming of age or sorts for Asian Canadian writing, as fellow writers Paul Yee, Sky Lee, Wayson Choy and Denise Chong also began their writing careers and quickly established themselves as acclaimed authors.       

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Before Asian Canadian writing was considered a genre unto itself, one of Wong-Chu’s most critical projects took place in the library stacks of the University of British Columbia, where he went over the entire inventory of books with a fine-tooth comb, looking up any literary magazines within the past thirty years.  His mission in 1989 was to map all of the Asian Canadian writers and their material to compile them into an anthology of Asian Canadian literature. In selecting the best twenty best pieces, Wong-Chu and co-editor Bennett Lee co-edited an anthology called Many Mouthed Birds (1991).

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The publishing of this anthology set the way for the emergence of an Asian Canadian genre that continues to take shape today. One of the short stories included a piece by Wayson Choy, and was subsequently expanded into the Vancouver Book award-winning Jade Peony. In addition to co-editing Many Mouthed Birds, Wong-Chu also co-edited with Andy Quan Swallowing Clouds, published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 1999.

In 1996, Jim Wong-Chu became one of the founders of the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop (ACWW) and moved from the basements to a formal registered not-for-profit society. Until the early 1990's, there was not much of a critical mass of Asian Canadian writers.  It wasn't until closer to the end of the 90's that university English departments were producing a lot of young people who wanted to write, and within a couple of years, a handful people in the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop suddenly grew to more 70 members.

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Wong-Chu started off simply, by offering workshops and then later turning to manuscript preparation by helping young writers to find a publisher. The Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop became both an editor and agent for young emerging writers. In 1995, ACWW created an internal newsletter called RicePaper which later became a Canada Council-funded literary arts magazine. Wong-Chu was interested in creating a body of literature to legitimately establish an Asian Canadian genre that could be put into a library and used in educational institutions.  In 2015, Wong-Chu co-edited his final anthology, the best of Ricepaper, called AlliterAsian (Arsenal Pulp Press).  Ricepaper continued strong in its twenty years as a quarterly print publication featuring new and existing Asian Canadian writers, and evolved to become a digital webzine.  

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Jim Wong-Chu's most recent project was the establishment of a literary festival celebrating Pacific Rim Asian Canadian writing, hosted by the Asian Canadian Writer’s Workshop Society.   For the past five years, the festival organized workshops and panels led by critically acclaimed authors such as Paul Yee, SKY Lee, Joy Kogawa.  As Jim Wong-Chu had once said, "Knowledge sets you free."  Thank you for all that you've done for the community.  

Book Launch - Laifong Leung's Contemporary Chinese Fiction Writers at the Richmond Public Library