Writers Spotlight

As a Chinese immigrant to Canada, I am always aware of the cultural differences between new immigrants and local residents, and of the cultural shocks to both Canadians and Chinese in various situations. Working as a cultural ambassador, I travel and teach in universities both in China and Canada. This opportunity has offered me an insight into the cultural differences and similarities between the cultures. I started to integrate my own experiences of being exposed to both cultures in my writing, and have thus produced a short story collection, Lotus Seeds—Flavours for A New Land.

I have had good experiences with mentorship programs for my creative writing. As an emerging writer, I have a passion for creative writing. However, I have never received formal training in it. Creative writing is completely different from academic writing. Also, because English is my second language, my mother tongue of Mandarin always affects the way I express myself in English.  I would expect that through mentorship, I would become a writer with my own voice but will improve in my creative writing skills of expression with guidance from my mentor, Sally Ito. I also believe that through the revising and editing process with her, my writing will be more acceptable to English readers.

My writing process comprises of me writing in diaries daily and taking notes of the immediate reflections of anything that interests me. I also take notes from my reading of and my teaching of literature that inspires me to write.

If I could choose a writer to write about my life story, I would choose the Chinese immigrant writer in the States, Wang Ping. She is the author of The Last Communist Virgin, American Visa, Foreign Devil: Of Flesh & Spirit and The Magic Whip, and the cultural study Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China. Because she has been exposed to both Chinese and American cultures, and because of her accurate descriptions in her writing about the experience of both worlds in English, I would consider her voice authentic and believable.

As a writer, I would like to have “a room of my own,” which means that I do not have to write under financial and social obligations. I would like to respect my own writing talents and interests enough not have to worry about pandering to a certain audience.  

Ten years from now, I would expect that the book I am working on now will have been published, available in both digital and print format. I would consider it a low point if I couldn’t enjoy the activities around the publication of a book, for example, having a book launch, doing book readings, and attending prize ceremonies, which is what writers are facing today with the pandemic restrictions. I would miss having the connection with an audience. I would consider it a highlight if my published book would have a good readership by its sales and reviews.

As an emerging writer, I am very grateful to have this opportunity to receive editorial feedback and professional advice. I am particularly excited to be working with Sonnet L’Abbé. Sonnet’s approach to ethics and poetics has been a foundational influence for me, so her insights and guidance will be invaluable.

Fault Lines explores the complexities of displacement, migration, and (de)colonization in our current era of global climate crisis. It is a parallel project to my dissertation, which examines decolonizing communication within the Idle No More movement. I have been grappling with the core ideas for a very long time (the earliest poem dates back to 2006), but the overall shape of the manuscript came into focus after I wrote the title poem in 2017.

My writing process for poetry tends to follow a pattern. Individual poems grow out of a central image, line, or inquiry. Sometimes I can make my way to a full draft within a day. More often, I jot down various fragments and set them aside until I have a better sense of connections and trajectories. If it seems like a specific poem belongs to a larger project, I add it to the relevant bulletin board(s). As a project starts to expand and cohere, I alternate between revising individual poems and the overall manuscript. In both instances, I end up collecting a lot of external research material, and I store every draft in a massive accordion folder.

If I could choose one author to write a book about my life, I’ll say Michael Ondaatje, because the final product would likely be a memorable blend of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

Radical prospect: in a perfect world, writers would receive a stable salary during all stages of working on a project.

In the years to come, I hope to see the fruition of several projects I have been working on, and to have them exist as published texts. As a graduate student struggling to find the time, resources, and confidence needed to achieve my creative writing goals, I am no stranger to self-doubt. At the same time, I try to keep moving forward by looking ahead to the eventual reactions from readers, and other future career highlights.

With my mentor’s guidance, I’m confident that I’ll emerge from this program with an extraordinary work of fiction. Beyond this, I hope to gain techniques and establish writing rituals that will enable to me to continue to improve as a writer long after the mentorship ends.

It was 2017 and I had just turned 30. With a newborn in my arms, I realized that if I didn’t begin writing the book that I held in my heart for most of my adult life, I may never do it.

I had written what would become the first line of my novel in my personal writing journal years earlier, something about faith and quietude, and from a few simple words an entire manuscript came into being over the next year. The current iteration of my novel centres the experiences of Muslim women in Toronto against a backdrop of rising right-wing nationalism.

I was really fortunate to partially complete the manuscript remotely through the Humber creative writing program. The environments I write in are almost as important as the writing itself. After a year of roaming from cafe to cafe, I’ll never forget the idyllic way in which I completed the first draft: in a sky-blue cabin surrounded by rustling leaves and birds, far from city life.

I tend to do a lot of freewriting and fictionalized journaling. Although a lot of the writing I produce in this way is often subpar and therefore accompanied by self-loathing, it helps tremendously with my creative process. Once I re-read my passages, I normally unearth a gem of sentence or develop an insight about a character that I can then include in the novel. I also engage in other forms of creative expression such as sketching and painting which I believe helps with my writing.

Pankaj Mishra is an essayist and author who has an extraordinarily rich, nuanced, and poetic way of expressing his ideas and I would choose him to write a book about my life. I also feel that he possesses a self-awareness and quiet spirituality that is evident in some of his writings and interviews. There are a great many things about Blackness and womanhood that he may not be able to grasp, but I believe we share the same sensibilities and I would entrust him to pen an interpretation of my life story.

I find that writers—especially writers of fiction—tend to be slightly removed from the world, having played the role of observer, a trait that makes them exceptional storytellers but not always strong in terms of, say, civic engagement. In a perfect world, novelists in particular, would be as engaged with the world around them as they are with the worlds they create on the page.

Ten years from now, I hope I will continue to dedicate myself to the written word, gaining some kind of mastery over the craft and acclaim as an author, but also pave the way for fresh, new voices. I would also like to engage in screenwriting and turn my novel into a feature film.

Back in 2012, I wrote a non-fiction essay about why so many people from the diasporic Vietnamese community made their living as nail salon workers. As the daughter of nail salon entrepreneurs, I was curious to know the answers myself. I learned so much during the research of that project, and I wanted to do more with what I found by creating a work of fiction that centres around the lives of nail salon workers in modern-day Toronto.

When I write, I need to know where I’m going and how it fits into the bigger picture. Outlining keeps my brain from exploding. That’s the Capricorn in me. Currently, I’m using the 27 Chapter Outline, which I’ve physically drawn out on a piece of paper and taped to the wall so I can visually see my story progress from Act 1 through to Act 3.

If I could choose an author to write about my life, I’d choose Kim Thuy. She’s a Vietnamese-Canadian author who writes with such care and exacting reflection. Her books have validated and resurfaced many of my childhood memories. It’s as if she has already written about my life.

In a perfect world, writers, along with everybody else, would receive a basic living income that would allow them to pursue their passions with the assurance that their basic necessities will be covered.

In 10 years, I better have finished this book and be on my second! Publishing any work of fiction would be such a feat. However, one of my fears is that my writing career could be hampered by inertia.

I hope this mentorship helps me bring my manuscript to the best of its potential, and that I learn a lot from my mentor about editing poems and structuring a collection. Having come from prose writing into poetry, I have often been told my writing was too expository, so I hope to find a balance between keeping my voice and rhythm and paring down the verbiage. Ultimately, I expect the mentorship to challenge me in ways I cannot envision now.

The oldest poems in my manuscript go back 13 years ago, to the first poetry workshop I took in Canada, at UBC. My writing directly reflects the life and perspective changes I’ve been through since. At a certain point, it became simply a matter of selecting those poems I thought were most relevant to the themes I saw developing throughout my body of work: leaving, being in a new place, learning how to exist in translation.

I handwrite whenever the mood strikes, usually during blank moments on transit, in waiting rooms, at lunch hour. I keep with me every old paper draft that has not yet been shaped into a poem, and I sift through them for inspiration. I am also part of a writing group, meeting twice a month, which generously provides me with motivation in the form of deadlines.

If I could choose an author to write a book about my life, it would depend what book that is. For a novel, I’d nominate Zadie Smith, who can make any life story feel epic. For a collection of linked short stories, names that resonate with me now are Ali Smith and Tove Jansson. For poetry, I’d take Marina Tsvetaeva in a heartbeat, but I’ve been trying to write that book myself.

Ten years from now, I have published the manuscript I’m currently working on, and I am at work on a new project. Whether I have published more collections or not, I have gained experience and insight through more mentorships and through the support of a writing community.

I am uncomfortable thinking in terms of an ideal world, or me as a ruler – I think I would make quite an inept ruler. My wish for my writing cohorts is that they could have a life where they afford to take entire blocks of time and dedicate them to writing, but without losing the sense of immersion into the world. Also, every writer should have access to a writing space/room of their own.

So far, the highlights of my writing life have consisted in getting direct feedback on my poetry, and I expect that will be the case in the future too. Conversely, a low point is that at which I become uninspired or simply lose the wish to write.