The Word Vancouver Literary Festival is happening on September 19, 2026, and ACWW is sponsoring a panel session featuring Asian Canadian writers. Three bold writers explore how contemporary life is shaped by technology, politics, and systems of power. Kawika Guillermo’s Of Floating Isles moves through gaming culture, identity, and coming of age in shifting digital worlds. Sung Ming Chow’s Demotopia examines the uneasy relationship between democracy and artificial intelligence, where human decision-making meets algorithmic influence. Joanne Leow’s Exhumations: Inside the Body of a Petrostate traces memory, extraction, and the hidden human costs of oil economies. Together, these works offer urgent and imaginative ways of understanding the present and the futures still being imagined within it.
Speakers include: Kawika Guillermo, Of Floating Isles: On Growing Pains and Video Games. (Arsenal Pulp Press) | Sung Ming Chow, Demotopia: An Exploration of Democracy and Artificial Intelligence (Electromagnetic Print) | Joanne Leow, Exhumations: Inside the Body of a Petrostate (Penguin Random House Canada), Moderator: Todd Wong.
Saturday, September 19, 2026, 3.30-4.30pm in Room C400, UBC Robson Square (800 Robson Street, Vancouver)