The Enrollment Controversy Response

The MacLean's article Too Asian (now redubbed, The Enrollment Controversy), certainly drew a firestorm of responses from the public and especially academia. In response, Ray Hsu's Creative Writing class (with Tetsuro Shigematsu) embarked on a creative video project as a response. If you're interested in the original article, it can be viewed in its entirety here.

This original and creative film was brought to life by Asian Canadian Writing class protesting the Maclean article about the university being too Asian. People involved are Tetsuro and Bahareh Shigematsu, Matt Lyons, Mika, Taizo, Caleb, Libby, Mattea, Danielle Thien, Anna Kaye, Cara Kauhane, David Mount, Happy and Hart Kreter, Haruka Sakaguchi, Indra Pramit, Reena Yu, Ray Hsu, Krissy Darch, , Heidi Loos, Joomi Seo, Kuei-ming Lin, and the UBC Creative Writing Program.

Ricepaper 15th Anniversary Celebration

Ricepaper, ACWW along with Friend's of Foo's Ho Ho, co-hosted the 15th anniversary celebration dinner at Foo's Ho Ho Restaurant at 102 East Pender Street in Vancouver. ACWW Board of directors emcee'd the event as Gung Haggis organizer and ACWW board member, Todd Wong, and actor, radio broadcaster, and comedian, Tetsuro Shigematsu maneuvered the evening beautifully as audiences were treated to an 8 course meal, special celebrity guests and a raffle draw.

In celebration of Ricepaper‘s milestone 15th anniversary at Foo’s Ho Ho Restaurant, the oldest surviving Chinese restaurant in historic Chinatown, audiences enjoyed a taste of pioneer-style Chinese food while serenaded with a poetry reading by renowned poet Evelyn Lau, who was also honoured with the ACWW Community Builder's Award.

Ricepaper is Canada’s only nationally-distributed literary magazine devoted to showcasing Asian Canadian artists, writers, performers and innovators. For 15 years, Ricepaper has published important work for and about Asian Canadian community luminaries such as David Suzuki, Fred Wah, Denise Chong, and Evelyn Lau while also providing opportunities for new and emerging talent to publish their work. This video, Ricepaper 15th Anniversary celebration on W2TV is courtesy of Sid Tan on Vimeo.

Ray's Launch

As Wikipedia says about the very lovely and talented board member and writer extraordinaire, Ray "grew up in Toronto, Ontario. Hsu received an Honours B.A. and an M.A. in English literature from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in English Literary Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. While completing his Ph.D., he taught for over two years at Oakhill Correctional Institution, where he founded the Prison Writing Workshop. He is currently based in Vancouver, where he is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.

He has published over a hundred and twenty-five poems in over forty magazines internationally. His work has appeared in such anthologies as Breathing Fire 2: Canada's New Poets and The Echoing Years: An Anthology of Poetry from Canada & Ireland. In 2007, Hsu and his work were the subject of an episode of the television documentary series Heart of a Poet produced by Canadian filmmaker Maureen Judge." Watch here as Ray performs for the Issue 15.3 magazine launch of Ricepaper.

Books

Anthropy (2004)[4]
"Cold Sleep Permanent Afternoon" (2010)[5]

Awards

Gerald Lampert Award (2005)
Trillium Book Award (Poetry), finalist (2005)
Lyman S.V. Judson and Ellen Mackechnie Judson Award (2007)
E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize in Poetry (2000, 2001)

Want to Get Published? Lorimer is Looking, ACWW Wants to Help You

James Lorimer & Company Ltd., a Canadian publishing house in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is looking for writers. In particular, it is searching for submissions to its Children’s and Young Adult Series and has come to ACWW, looking for manuscripts for its "SideStreets Series" – an edgy, issues-based novels for ages 13 and up.

While first priority is good writing, with believable characters, situations, and dialogue, all settings must be Canadian, with storylines that take place in the child or teen world with minimal adult involvement. As publishers of novels and short stories based on the original Degrassi TV series, Lorimer shares the commitment evident in that pioneering series to serious engagement with themes and issues in a way that reaches a contemporary youth audience.

At this time we do not publish picture books, seasonal stories, cookbooks, board books, activity books, historical fiction, or fantasy. We are not interested in stories written to convey a lesson or moral.

Want to know more about SideStreets?

• Interest level: ages 13 and up (high school/YA)

• Reading level: grades 3-5 (hi-lo)

• Length: 30,000 words

• Genre: realistic, contemporary, issues-based fiction

SideStreets novels are fast-paced, high-interest stories with the ability to pull in even the most reluctant teen readers. They feature realistic characters, situations, and dialogue, and explore the often difficult feelings and situations faced by contemporary Canadian teens. We’re not interested in overdone story lines drawn from the world of movies and television rather than from real life. Past topics include: addiction, sexuality, bullying, gangs, mental disorders, and gambling. Characters must be aged 15 and up. Stories that feature male main characters are especially welcome. Settings must be Canadian and contemporary, and diversity of background in terms of race, class and ethnicity is particularly welcome.

ACWW will provide the rest of the details for submissions if you're interested. Please contact us at: info@asiancanadianwritersworkshop.ca. If you are interested in having your manuscript read, we would also be happy to do that, too. The ACWW is committed to helping emerging writers publish in the genre of Asian Canadian writing. When we helped create Henry Chow & Other Stories Anthology, we wanted a young adult fiction book that would appeal to readers who have grown up in Canada reading stories which oftentimes rarely had stories that they could personally relate in an ethnically diverse country such as ours. Here's our chance to make a difference, a change.

Larissa Lai's Automaton Biographies Reading

Long-time Ricepaper contributor, writer, and UBC English professor, Larissa Lai brings us Automaton Biographies. Larissa's new book of poetry consists of four long poems: “Rachel,” a meditation in the voice of the cyborg figure Rachel from Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner and its source material, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; “nascent fashion,” which addresses contemporary war and its excesses; “Ham,” which circulates around the chimpanzee named Ham sent up into space as part of the Mercury Redstone missions by NASA in the 1960s and later donated to the Coulston Foundation for biomedical research; and “auto matter,” a kind of unfolding autobiography told in poems.

Judy Fong-Bates in Vancouver

On Friday May 29, 2010, Judy Fong-Bates gave a reading at UBC's Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. In partnership with Random House Canada, UBC Community Partners for Learning, the Chinese Canadian Historical Society (CCHSBC), the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop (ACWW), Schema Magazine, the North American Association of Asian Professionals (NAAAP), and ExplorAsian, the IKBLC invited author Judy Fong-Bates' for a reading of her new book, Year of Finding Memory. An elegant and surprising book about a Chinese family's difficult arrival in Canada, and a daughter's search to understand remarkable and terrible truths about her parents' past lives. Growing up in her father's hand laundry in small town Ontario, Judy Fong Bates listened to stories of her parents' past lives in China, a place far removed from their every-day life of poverty and misery. But in spite of the allure of these stories, Fong Bates longed to be a Canadian girl. Fifty years later she finally followed her curiosity back to her ancestral home in China for a reunion that spiralled into a series of unanticipated discoveries. The Year of Finding Memory explores a particular, yet universal, world of family secrets, love, loss, courage and shame. This is a memoir of a daughter's emotional journey, and her painful acceptance of conflicting truths. In telling the story of her parents, Fong Bates is telling the story of how she came to know them, of finding memory. Watch as Larry Wong, Vancouver community historian, introduce Judy to the audience.

Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop & UBC Creative Writing 439/539 at Word on the Street

Ray Hsu of the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop talks about "cultural writing" and confronts the challenges of theorizing Asian Canadian writing.