My short story, “The Geography of Desire,” was published recently in issue #17 of Juked.
Read MoreAmnesia of June Bugs to be Published in 2022 by 7.13 Books
I’ve been holding on to this secret for a little while now after signing and returning the publisher’s contract because I wanted to wait until the moment felt right to me, but the day has finally come! I sold my very first novel, Amnesia of June Bugs to 7.13 Books
Read More1st Piece Accepted in 2019
So today I got the awesome news that my short story “Geography of Desire” was accepted by Juked.
Read MoreProtect Your Darlings, Don't Kill Them
I’m gonna be straight, having a tenure track job as a writer/academic is different than I’d imagined it being. It’s impossible to imagine how busy you’ll be, but as a baby-faced academic, I have so many meetings to go to now: department meetings, BFA curricular revision meetings, MFA program meetings, first-year faculty fellowship meetings . . .
Read MoreProtecting this Delicate Thing Called Hope
So much of writing for me is sitting my ass down and writing, even when I don't want to. I have really good discipline. I can write for fifteen hours straight sometimes, and then revise and edit for days and weeks afterwards. The hardest part of writing I can do and have done since my first workshop back in 2002. The other crucial part of writing for me involves psychological and emotional maintenance (aka self-care), which is just as important. Normally, self-care for me means not only exercising, meditating, getting enough sleep, eating well, and going on dates with LB every week, but also ignoring my own negative thinking and putting myself out there again and again (even when it feels POINTLESS) and not getting discouraged (even when NOTHING is happening), which has been particularly difficult this summer.
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Being Part of the Hapa Project
I volunteered to have my picture taken for Kip Fulbeck's 2017-2018 photographic project known as Hapa Me, not knowing whether my picture (which for the record, I don't love) would be included in the 2018 collection. I received an email a few months later telling me that I was either in the installation or in the book, or both. The suspense was killing me.
Read MoreThe Slowness of Being on Submission
I'm writing this entry mostly for myself, but also for other aspiring literary fiction writers looking for blog entries about what it's like going on submission as a literary fiction writer.
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My Debut Hypertext
Literary/Speculative Hypertext Published
Imagine smashing speculative fiction, literary fiction, romance, and apocalyptic fiction into a hybrid, multimedia work, and you have a basic idea of what Dukkha, My Love is, at least conceptually.
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A new litmus test for APIA literary fiction
(My) Ten Rules for APIA, Asian American, and Hapa Fiction
Like the Bechdel Test, these ten rules are not intended to be the final word on any work by, from, or about Asian American literature, but rather, should be treated as the first critical lens that readers (can) use to call out and contest orientalism in publishing while also serving as a mandatory metric by which all readers (can) hold APIA writing accountable, as well as the presses that publish those works by and about us. The following test allows all of us to expect more of ourselves, of our readers, and of the publishing industry at large, but it is only a first step in a life of engaged reading.
Read MoreShort Story Published in Witness
Before the insurrection on Halloween, the security guard considered himself an atheist and a cynic, but there are some things too hard to understand, things without precedent, and one of them is a polished ten-inch Colt Python Revolver pointed directly up your nostrils.
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Alternate title: "Male Characters in Search of Female Characters who Can Force them to Get out of their Daily Routine and Finally Evolve"
Essay about Murakami's Men Without Women Published in Ploughshares
Men Without Women is a familiar, easily identifiable, and oddly comforting book for the Murakami reader, privileging the emotional landscape of lonely Japanese men through scaffolding characterization, personal idiosyncrasy, and monkey-wrench narratives instead of dramatic Hollywood plot lines, food porn, or cultural didacticism.
Read More2nd Piece Accepted in 2017
My short story about class/race in Humboldt Park, "Guide to the Other Side of the Universe," which is part of my short story collection, Geography of Desire, was accepted yesterday in the Angel City Review, an awesome LA-based literary journal. Stay tuned for more deetz!
Short Story Published in Arts & Letters
After mom got remarried to a white architect, my twin brother and I moved to Wacker Drive to live in the future. For Yoshi and me, the honeycombed Marina Towers were a time warp to another dimension.
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My Dual Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen and Charles Baxter Published in Ploughshares
The Sympathizer forces readers of Asian American Pacific Islander (APIA) literary fiction to reconsider our own craft dogma and ask questions about the value of literary didacticism all over again: when is didactic literature useful, even necessary, and what purposes can it serve in our society as art, historiography, and also racial, cultural, and moral education?
Read MoreRevisions Are Done!
I've been working tirelessly with my agent on my revisions for The Ninjas of My Greater Self for a solid three months now and we are finally done with the substantive edits, which feels fucking incredible. I'm just waiting for a few blurbs from some literary superstars and then my agent will officially begin sending out cover letters to editors. I'm exhilarated about this. I'm also mildly terrified. I mean, these next three to four months will shape my literary debut in the New York publishing world and also have a major impact on my literary career. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but it's actually true. I've been waiting my whole life for this moment. My fingers are crossed.
1st Piece Accepted in 2017
I got the great news yesterday that my short story "Conspiracy of Lemons," which is part of my conceptual short story collection, City of Sand, was accepted in Witness, a journal I've been sending submissions to off and on since 2010. It's incredibly satisfying to finally get a piece in that literary journal. Stay tuned!
Where literary and cultural analysis get a face lift
Meet your APIA Ploughshares Blogger for 2017
I got the great news recently that I'll be blogging for Ploughshares for 2017, focusing on APIA literature, gender constructions, and video games as literature, among other things.
7x7 (1 December 2016)
Prose Poem Published in 7x7 LA
The tattoos on your forearms are secret passage to puberty.
Sexuality becomes a magic trick to cut yourself in half.
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Laws of Drowning and Rhetoric A Finalist for Curbside Splendor's Novella Contest
I found out today that my novella, The Laws of Drowning and Rhetoric, is a finalist in Curbside Splendor's Second-Annual Wild Onion Novella Contest, which is fucking amazing and wonderful (though I won't let myself get too excited because the other three finalists are all talented and worthy). For those of you not familiar with Curbside Splendor, it's one of the best indie presses in the whole goddamn world (it's true). And what's even more awesome, Curbside Splendor is a Chicago joint, which makes me happy and proud to be part of this contest since Chicago is and will always be my hometown. The winner will be announced in the beginning of December, but I'm not gonna lie, it would be fucking incredible to win this contest. It would be a dream come true. It would help build my career. It would help me stay connected to my city forever. It would be incredibly encouraging too. And considering that I've been working on this novella for ten years since I started my MFA, it would be life-changing for all the work I put into this manuscript. But for now, we'll have just have to wait and see. Fingers crossed, man. Fingers crossed.
Novella Chapter Published in JOYLAND
In this confusing time of professional androgyny and male disempowerment, men were wounded birds. Dual income households had emasculated them of their sacred institutions of power. Wings clipped, humbled and demoted to democratic gender roles, men had no choice now but to accept their new gun-to-the-head humanism and become motivation speakers and fitness gurus, construction muscle and Pentagon Yes-Men.
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