Appearing in Voice & Verse in December with Cha magazine.

Ten years ago, I had the honor of being the very first poet to have work accepted by Cha, a new literary journal starting in Hong Kong. It was the same year that my very first full-length book, On The Other Side Of The Eye was released by Sam's Dot Publishing. Cha had accepted my poem, "Zelkova Tree," and later did an insightful analysis of it, as well.

Cha holds the distinction of being Hong Kong's very first literary journal. I'm pleased to see Cha weathered the decade so well, going on to print many acclaimed poets, writers and artists from around the world with an ambitious set of themes throughout the years for our contributors to consider.

They recently announced that 65 selected poems from the ten-year history of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal will be included in a special section in the December 2017 issue of the Hong Kong-based print poetry magazine, Voice & Verse. Keep an eye out for it when it arrives!

It's here where I want to take note of Tammy Ho Lai-Ming, who is a Hong Kong–born editor, translator, and poet. She is the founding co-editor of Cha, and also an editor of the academic journal Victorian Network.

Her translations have appeared in World Literature Today, Chinese Literature Today, and Pathlight, among other places. She holds an MPhil from the University of Hong Kong and a PhD from King’s College London, and she is currently an assistant professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, where she teaches poetics, fiction, and modern drama.

Her first poetry collection is Hula Hooping from Chameleon Press. In 2016 she received the Young Artist Award in Literary Arts presented by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

Her co-founding editor is Jeff Zroback, originally from Canada. He has an MA in History, and is an editor by trade and has previously worked in Canada, Korea, Hong Kong and the UK. He was the co-editor of the short fiction collection Love & Lust (with Tammy Ho Lai-Ming) and has published fiction and poetry. He writes many of the Cha editorials.

I look forward to the next decades ahead for them and wish them even more support and recognition for their literary contributions and the community they have built for the arts.

[Poet Spotlight] Monica Youn

Monica Youn is the author of Blackacre (Graywolf Press, 2016); Barter (Graywolf Press, 2003); and Ignatz (Four Way Books, 2010), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and the New York Times Magazine, and she has been awarded fellowships from the Library of Congress and Stanford University, among other awards.

A former attorney, she now teaches poetry at Princeton University.

Thanks from the "Science Fiction is for Everyone" Panel at LA Harbor College

It was a packed room for our panel at LA Harbor College on Tuesday, April 25th discussing the importance of multicultural representation in speculative literature that afternoon. I had driven down four hours from Merced, California and my duties as a Visiting Artist in order to speak with the students and faculty on the subject of science fiction being for everyone.

Held in Tech 110, I was presenting with Stephanie Brown, Michael Paul Gonzalez, Jaymee Goh, Gregg Castro and Steven Barnes. It was a great line-up with some touching comments that drew on diverse fields of knowledge and experience, from the work and influence of Nnedi Okorafor and Octavia Butler, to the way readers and writers have been brought into the world of science fiction not only in the US but around the world, with a strong highlight on the appeal of steampunk and afrofuturism.

During my portion of the panel I focused on a discussion of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, and had the honor of previous SFPA president Deborah Kolodji in attendance as well as fellow SFPA member and community builder Denise Dumars facilitating the conversation, particularly in regards to Star*Line, the journal of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. To demonstrate the potential of what speculative poetry can do, I read two examples from our international membership for the audience: "How to Train your Velociraptors" by Rohinton Daruwala and "El superhéroe se ha ahorcado" by Campos Ricardo Burgos Lopez, translated by Fred W. Bergmann. We definitely got the point across, based on the conversations I had afterwards with everyone.

My thanks to everyone who made this wonderful afternoon possible!

[Poem] Zelkova Tree

My poem "Zelkova Tree" appeared in the first issue of Cha, a Hong Kong-based literary journal and appeared in the final section of my first full-length book of Lao American speculative poetry, On The Other Side Of The Eye in 2007.