A Probability of Being

I will be attending WisCon40! Here is my schedule for the weekend: YES, Our Stories Matter: Encouragement and Support For Creators With Marginalized Identities Friday, 4pm - 5.15pm, University C Jaymee Goh (M), Riley, Alex Jennings, Mark Oshiro, Susan Simensky Bietila  Marginalization affects our success as creators, oppression impacts our ability to create and can grind us down. At the same time, encouragement can come in many ways, from reader comments to supporting each other as marginalized creators. Let's discuss issues like: Why do you keep creating? When do you know you've touched someone with your art? How do you recharge after a setback? How can we support each other within and between different marginalized groups? When it feels like the whole world is telling you that your story doesn't matter, where do you find the strength to pick up the pen? The Downsides to Maker Culture Sat, 9:00–10:15 pm, Conference 1 Georgie L. Schnobrich (M), Candra K...

In loving memory of Goh Mei Mei, passed 4/4/16

Unlike many other people, I didn't apply several times. I apply only for specific line-ups. 2012 was, as I recall, a "year of Asians" with Hiromi Goto teaching at Clarion West, and Ted Chiang and Marjorie Liu teaching at Clarion. Before that, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant were teaching Clarion West, and I highly respect Small Beer Press and wanted to learn from them about the founding process. In general, I've been quite confident in my own skill and learning ability in writing fiction that I can sell. Clarion and Clarion West are highly competitive, and to be sure, there are very many deserving writers who don't get in. Every rejection I received, I would get bummed, and someone would gently remind me, there are other ways of succeeding in the writing world, among them the slow and steady track I've been working on for myself.  This year, I decided to try for Clarion because the instructor line-up (Kelly Link, Ted Chiang, Andy Duncan, Victor LaValle, Del...

It's  Bill Campbell 's birthday! I am now going to tell you a story about him: I first heard of him through the MOTHERSHIP call for submissions, and I was like "well, cool, but I got nothin' for an Afrofuturist anthology." Was totally going to buy it, though. Then suddenly Bill's in my inbox all, "hey, you wanna send us something?" And I'm like "whut, me??" because at the time, I had nothing, just a ranty blog and one steampunk story, and there wasn't much of a market for steampunk stories set in rather obscure countries back then, but Bill says, "yeah, you" so I send it to him anyway. Next thing I know I'm in a book with people I have crazy respect for like  Nisi Shawl  and  Sofia Samatar  and  Nora Jemisin  and  Silvia Moreno-Garcia . I'm sharing space with people I didn't know like  Minister Faust  and  Ernest Hogan  and  Daniel José Older  and  Chinelo Onwualu  who I hadn't met yet, hadn't ...

As one of the Author Spotlights for AnomalyCon 2016, con chair Kronda Seibert invited me to participate in the AnomalyCards, a set of postcards distributed at random, to be traded with other attendees for the whole set. Writers would contribute a flash fic, and artists would illustrate them. This sounded like a fine idea, so of course I sent in a thing! Here is the result!

I was recently invited to partake in a roundtable of sorts for International Women's Day at ELLE Malaysia, and was asked the question, "what is the greatest problem facing Malaysian women today?"  What a giant question! With no easy answer, and one either is going for incomplete, or totally pithy. I decided to go high abstract instead . It feels strange to read the other responses; my answer is so incredibly academic in comparison. Times like this, I worry that maybe I'm too academic. But it was an interesting challenge all the same!

A short short story I wrote, " Anak Sungai ," is now available to read at Truancy #2 . Truancy is a venue for fairytale re-tellings, re-castings, re-creations. I share a table of contents with the incredible Vajra Chandrasekera , fellow Malaysians Eeleen Lee and Sukhbir Cheema, and the lovely Mari Ness and Sarah Yasin! "Anak Sungai" is what my friend Munira calls "cerita rakyat moden." "Cerita rakyat" more properly translates to "folktale"; a direct translation is something like "tales of the citizenry," ha! It's the story of a river going out to sea. The animal names are in Malay, because I wrote this first and foremost for the audience that reads Malay and English at once!

I'm pleased to say that I am an invited author to the 37th International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts this year! I will be reading at 10.30am on Thursday, in Author Readings IV, Vista A! The chair will be Rachel Swirsky, and my co-readers are the inestimable Nisi Shawl and Sam J. Miller !! I think our outfit theme will be green.  Not only that, but my co-editor Joyce Chng will also be attending! It's her first North American appearance so I'm very excited to see her on this side of the Pacific for once. Please come! 

So now that " Liminal Grid " has been up for a few months now, I guess I should talk about some of the things I wrote into the story that are very personal to me!

This is a bit late (been busy) but the results of the Strange Horizons 2015 Readers Poll came out, and " Liminal Grid " is #3 in the fiction category!!! I'm stoked to be on the same list as my friend Gabby Reed, a tremendous writer. Also on the poll lists are incredible poems by Rose Lemberg and Shweta Narayan, and Rose's incredible article on using folklore in fiction ! Congrats to all the winners, and thanks for voting, readers!

My latest poem, "Assimilation," is up at inkscrawl , a journal of minimalist speculative micropoetry! I share a table of contents with some wonderful people, and the editor,   Bogi Takács is a delightful person who keeps an eye out for marginalized voices! E tweets about #diversesff with a series of recommendations. "Assimilation" was inspired by the batik-dyeing process and Sean Kelly's Rainway challenge dress on Project Runway !

Content warning for talk of depression and suicide.

At UC Riverside, there are two different science fiction reading groups for graduate students, one out of the English department which is more theory-based, and one out of the Creative Writing department which is more craft-based. I attended the latter one, and we had a writing prompt last month: a flash fic, 500 words, on the keyword "dinosaurs."  Because of a variety of reasons I didn't get around to writing my dinosaur flash fic until the meeting itself, and while everyone talked around me, I quickly typed up some 483 words. I had the idea for the first part most of the month, but didn't know how the rest of it would pan out. But I knew I wanted to think through evolution, and generational change. Here it is!

I am very, very, very happy to announce that I made a sale to Strange Horizons, one of my favourite zines on the 'net! It is my very first professional short story sale, and I was a little nervous about whether or not it could ever find a home, since it's in second person.  It went up today! Please check it out: Liminal Grid

The wonderful Bogi Takacs is guest-editing inkscrawl, a micropoetry journal, and e has put together a wonderful table of contents ! My poem, "Assimilation," will be part of "Atypical Weather" that will come out later this fall.  I can't wait to read what my fellow contributors have written! This will also be Stephany Lu's first publication, and I am SO excited to see eir work! 

I wrote this during the Bersih 2.0 rally a few years ago, and am bringing it back for Bersih4.

Last fall, when I TA'd for a course on introductory science fiction, I compiled a list of venues which publish science fiction and fantasy stories and poetry, for free online reading . How many such venues are there? The answer is: a lot. 56 in my list (which includes two sites of audio podcasts). The list sat on my Dreamwidth for ages, and I don't know if any of the students ever got around to reading any of them. Even I had only ever read three of them regularly, and never read most of them. This summer, that will change! I have set myself a summer reading goal: I'll work my way down this list, and select three stories to read from each venue. Just three, then move onto the next one. The idea is to get a sampling of all the venues.  My criteria for picking which stories to read should be simple; I'm still doing the Tempest Reading Challenge for most part. However, I've already broken the rule a couple of times, but it doesn't matter that much becaus...

This is an exciting week! Besides being the first week of the new quarter, and the week a good friend visits me after five years of not seeing each other, two of my poems went live!  Strange Horizons published "Magpie Wings," a science fictional re-telling of the folktale "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl" in which the characters are separated due to, essentially, class differences. There are several variations of the story: usually she's a fairy, he's a mortal; sometimes they're both celestial beings but have different roles which keep them separate; she is always of a higher class than he is, though, and serves in the Jade Palace as a handmaiden of the Jade Empress. She goes to live with him for a while and they are happy, but her duty forces her to leave. In Heaven and on Earth, they pine for each other, and the magpies on their yearly migration, take pity on them and offer them their backs so they can meet each other. Their story is commemorate...

Every sliver of injustice in our bones must be picked at, or sucked from the marrow; else slit open the flesh, reach in with your knife, remove the festering source. What good are your tools of righteousness, of goodwill, if they cannot break the fever?

My friend Patricia posted a challenge to a writing group I'm part of: What does your past or future Malaysia look like, 50-60 years from today? Write it as a story or a poem, both works. Bonus Points: If your character(s) speak in Manglish or variations thereof Double Bonus Points: If your setting has magic/future tech Triple Bonus Points: If it's Malaysia in outer space WITHOUT referencing politics