Happy New Year’s, everyone!
I have a very short awards eligibility list this year, which includes a nonfiction essay about the Chinese speculative fiction genre of wuxia and a speculative poem. Please consider me for any categories the pieces are eligible for. Also, please note that I am based in Canada so I qualify for the Aurora Awards as well.
- My essay “What Speculative Fiction Writers Can Learn From the Origins and Evolution of the Wuxia Genre“, originally published in the October 2021 SFWA Bulletin, then reprinted on the SFWA website, is eligible for awards categories like the Best Related Work (Hugo) and Creative Nonfiction (Ignyte).
Here’s an excerpt:
“To better understand the wuxia narrative tradition that has influenced me and numerous other Sino diaspora writers, I have spent the past two years researching the genre’s history and evolution. My journey has led me to realize that, just like the free-spirited xia who wanders outside of the bounds of everyday society, the power of wuxia lies in the fact it’s not easily explained with a short definition or illustrated by a few examples. In this essay, I will give an in-depth overview of the genre’s development, charting out the ways that it centers characters who resist established power structures, expands conventional views of speculative and genre fiction, and draws on a wide range of Sinophone literature as well as translingual and transnational influences.
As I approach wuxia fiction from the liminal space of a writer and translator living in the diaspora, I hope to address Anglophone readers’ lack of knowledge about or stereotypical views of this genre while also highlighting aspects of the genre that may be unknown to or overlooked by Sinophone readers and fans. I hope this overview will help contextualize the challenges that writers and translators working with the genre in English may face; when I work with wuxia in English, I am not only trying to reclaim it and bring innovations, but also having to find ways to explain the genre clearly without erasing nuances, to navigate between cultural contexts, and to subvert the biases of the white, Orientalist gaze. For me, to bring wuxia into English through writing or translation is a way of highlighting marginalized voices fighting against systemic oppression, expanding existing definitions of speculative fiction in the Anglophone publishing world, and showing the power of cross-cultural literary dialogue.”
2. My poem, “The Reality of Ghosts,” appeared in the August 2021 issue of Fantasy Magazine. Tor Nightfire also included this poem in their August 2021’s Best Horror Short Fiction and Poetry feature. It is eligible for any poetry awards, such as for the Canadian award Aurora (Best Poem category) and the Rhysling Award.
“It’s much easier / to summon spirits than to // cast them away. When they are / evoked, they’ll return without fanfare, / and they’ll feast. A hunting of the unreal / living, a haunting of the faithless.”
Also, here are some of my other non-speculative works published this year if you want to see what else I have written or translated:
- The essay “Barriers, Privileges, and Invisible Labor: A Sino Diaspora Translator’s Perspective” appeared in Words Without Borders and was also featured in “Lit Hub Daily: The Best of the Literary Internet” round-up. This essay is eligible for “year’s best” nonfiction anthologies.
- My translations of five poems by Qiu Jin appeared in Asymptote and was the 2nd most viewed translation on their website this year.
- My translation of Fei Ming’s poem “lantern” appeared in the December 2021 issue of The Puritan.
Thank you so much for checking out my work. Happy 2022!
