This year’s LiterASIAN Writers Festival features a stellar lineup of authors who are challenging traditional notions of storytelling with imagination and verve.
A prime example is Vancouver-born poet and essayist Evelyn Lau. Her newest collection, Parade of Storms (Anvil Press), focuses on the weather.
“Never having thought of herself as an environmental poet, the author found that under the strictures of the pandemic, the recent effects of climate change became more and more intrusive and unavoidable,” Anvil Press states on its website. “Storms, floods, wildfires, and environmental devastations sent news headlines leaping out in sharp relief—‘a river in the sky,’ ‘atmospheric rivers,’ ‘parade of storms,’ ‘heat dome’—and in such poetic terminology. Weather, both physical and emotional, forms the backdrop to this new collection.”
Lau will be part of a discussion entitled When Railways Were Highways: Remembering Jim Wong-Chu’s Legacy with writers Yasuko Thanh (Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains and To the Bridge) and former Ricepaper editor-in-chief Jessica Gin-Jade Chan. Scheduled for 6 p.m. on Saturday (June 27) at the Chinatown Storytelling Centre, this panel “brings together writers whose creative lives were shaped by the mentorship, advocacy, and generosity of Jim Wong-Chu”, according to the LiterASIAN website.
Wong-Chu, a co-founder of the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop and founder of Ricepaper, died in 2017. He was a published poet but his greatest impact came in his tireless support for scores of Asian Canadian writers, including Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction winner Madeliene Thien and City of Vancouver Book Award winner Wayson Choy.
Elder Larry Grant at LiterASIAN opening
The Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop, Vancouver Public Library, and Ricepaper launched the annual LiterASIAN festival in 2013. This year, it will take place on Saturday (June 27) and Sunday (June 28) under the theme of Re-Generation.
The festival opens at 1 p.m. on Saturday at the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver with Writing Through Time with Larry Grant, Scott Steedman, and Sarah Ling. Grant is a highly respected Musqueam Elder with Chinese ancestry. The memoir Reconciling: A Lifelong Struggle to Belong, by Grant in conversation with Steedman, is nominated for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize at the B.C. and Yukon Book Prizes.
Ling produced a 2016 documentary about Grant’s family, All Our Father’s Relations, which highlighted connections between Chinese pioneers and the Musqueam Indian Band. (The Musqueam won’t use the word “nation” until their people are free from the Indian Act.)
The event focusing on the Grant family will be followed at the same location with a trio of Asian Canadian authors whose health challenges have informed their writing. Courage to Write, Courage to Heal features Keiko Honda (Hidden Flowers), Kagan Goh (Surviving Samsara), and Steffi Tad-y (Notes from the Ward).
Writing and recovery
Honda has a PhD in public health and previously worked as a cancer epidemiologist at Columbia University. After becoming a permanent wheelchair user at the age of 40, she decided to turn her home into a salon space for artists and intergenerational dialogue. Born in Japan, Honda now lives in Vancouver, where she has been honoured with the city’s 2014 Remarkable Women Award.
Meanwhile, Goh is a multidisciplinary artist who writes poetry and plays. Sometimes referred to as the “bipolar poet laureate”, he addresses mental illness, recovery, and self-acceptance through spoken-word performances, theatrical work, and writing.
Tad-y is a Manila-born artist and writer with a disability. She has been published in Room Magazine, Event, CV2, Midnight Sun, and Open Minds Quarterly. Her work also appeared in Mandaragat: An Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing, edited by veteran Vancouver journalist Teodoro (“Ted”) Alcuitas.
LiterASIAN reflects renewal
Another festival highlight at the Vancouver Chinese Cultural Centre is Between Tongues and Pages: New Asian Canadian Writing. Effie Pow will moderate this conversation at 4 p.m. on Saturday with authors Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho (The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street) and Jinwoo Park (Oxford Soju Club). Their early manuscripts were each recognized by the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award.
Ho ended up writing a poignant memoir about school years growing up with her siblings on the West Side of Vancouver while her parents were running a private hospital in Taiwan. Park authored an espionage thriller centered on the only Korean restaurant in Oxford, England.
In addition, LiterASIAN will present more events on Sunday. They include a literary walking tour, writing workshop, and chapbook-making class. The festival will close at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday with a Diasporic Writers Salon + LiterAsian Collab featuring CBC Non-Fiction Prize winner Jonathan Poh, poet Phebe M. Ferrer, and former City of Vancouver poet laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam. It’s at 1111 Union Street with admission by donation.
“Fifty years after Inalienable Rice, the first anthology of Asian Canadian writing, we are witnessing a renewal,” festival director Allan Cho said in a statement. “LiterASIAN 2026 brings together writers who are not only reflecting on cultural inheritance, but actively transforming it.”
Festival details
The Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop will present LiterASIAN 2026 on Saturday (June 27) and Sunday (June 28). It gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, ACCESS Copyright Foundation, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the City of Vancouver, and community partners. Tickets for LiterASIAN events are available through the festival website.
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