Bob Bradshaw helped select the prose. See his Cha profile.                                                          

Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Abigail Cheung is a first year Yale-China English Teaching Fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She currently teaches courses in English and American Studies and volunteers with refugees in her spare time. Cheung graduated from Yale University in 2011 with degrees in Political Science and Ethnicity, Race and Migration. She is thrilled to be living and teaching in Hong Kong and honoured to be contributing to Cha. [Read]

Alice Tsay is currently studying English literature at Oxford University. A native of California, she has taught English in Hong Kong and Taiwan and holds a degree in Music and English from Amherst College. Tsay is a Staff Reviewer for Cha. [Read] [Cha profile]

Born and raised in Burma, Aye Wollam arrived in the US in 1991 to continue her education, when the schools in Burma were shut down due to the country's political turmoil. Since graduating from Western Illinois University with a biology degree, she has been working as a genomic scientist. A scientist by training, and poet by passion, Wollam spends her free time writing poetry and fiction. She lives with her husband and two kids in St Louis, Missouri. Visit her website for more information. [Read]

Birgit Linder grew up in Germany and has lived in the United States, Taiwan, China and now Hong Kong. She is professor of Comparative Literary Studies at the City University of Hong Kong where she teaches courses in comparative literature and translation studies. Her research topics and publications include representations of madness in Chinese and other literary tradition, comparative Gothic literature, Medical Humanities in the Chinese context, and the literary relationships between Germany and China. She has previously published poetry in the International Literature Quarterly, Cerebration, Kavya Bharati, Clockwise Cat and Mad Poets Review. [Read]

Christopher Leibow is an internationally obscure poet and visual artist livingin Salt Lake City. He is an MFA graduate from Antioch at Los Angeles.His images have appeared or are forthcoming in Lumina, 491 Magazine, Light Feather and The Delinquent. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice. Visit his art website for more information. [View]

Daryl Qilin Yam will be reading English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Warwick this coming October. He has been published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and Ceriph, and is forthcoming in the anthology Fish Eats Lion. He has also contributed writing to The New Paper and AWARE. Yam is currently an editorial intern at studioKALEIDO and a mentee in Ceriph's ongoing mentorship programme for prose. He is also the creative director and a performer in Living Rooms, a multiple bill staged at the Play Den this August. He blogs here and tweets here. [Read] [Cha profile]

When she is not writing poems, Donna Vorreyer teaches middle school and, therefore, sometimes acts like she is twelve years old. Her work has appeared in many journals, most recently in Sweet, Linebreak, Rhino, Arsenic Lobster and Caesura. Her chapbooks include Womb/Seed/Fruit (Finishing Line Press), Come Out, Virginia (Naked Mannekin Press) and Ordering the Hours (Maverick Duck Press). Visit her website for more information. [Read]

Eddie Tay is author of three collections of poetry, Remnants, A Lover's Soliloquy and The Mental Life of Cities and has been invited to various international literary festivals. He is originally from Singapore and is currently an Assistant Professor teaching poetry and children's literature at the Department of English, Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is Cha's Reviews Editor. Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it [Read & View] [Cha profile]

Feroz Rather was born and raised in Kashmir. He studied English Literature in New Delhi and worked with Random House. He is currently attending the MFA program at California State University Fresno where he also teaches fiction writing. His work has appeared in many journals in India including The Caravan, Tehelka, Reading Hour, Combat Law, Harmony, and Economic and Political Weekly. He was once interviewed by Christian Science Monitor, and his poem "The Stars of My Sky" was excerpted in an anthology, Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir (Penguin India: 2011). His nonfiction is forthcoming with Los Angeles Review. [Read]

Glen Jennings was born in Melbourne and studied in Australia and China. His articles and reviews have appeared in a number of journals and magazines including Arena Magazine, Mattoid, Steep Stairs Review, The Australian Journal of Politics and History and The China Journal. He teaches Literature and is Associate Dean (Academic Operations) in foundation studies at Trinity College, the University of Melbourne. [Read]

Goh Cheng Fai Zach was born in Ipoh, Malaysia, where he lived all his life before moving to Penang to study English Language and Literature in Universiti Sains Malaysia, where he received his BA. He is currently an MPhil student at the School of English, The University of Hong Kong, where he spends his free time dabbling in creative writing for his private amusement. [Read]

Helena Hu has been secretly writing stories and plays since the age of 10. She is based in Hong Kong. [Read]

Native Californian John Givens teaches fiction writing in Dublin. He got his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, was a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Korea for two years, studied art and language in Kyoto for four years, and worked in Tokyo as a writer and editor for eight years. Givens has published three novels: Sons of the Pioneers, A Friend in the Police, and Living Alone. The Plum Rains, a collection of short stories set in 17th-century Japan, was published in Ireland by The Liffey Press. Other stories have appeared in various publications in the US, Asia and Europe. See his website for more information. [Read]

John McKernan grew up in the middle of Omaha Nebraska in the middle of the US. He has recently retired after teaching forty-one years at Marshall University. He wanders hither and yon on his goat and broccoli farm visited nightly by deer in West Virginia where he lives – mostly – and edits ABZ Press. He has published poems in many places from The Atlantic Monthly to Zuzu's Petals. His most recent book is a selected poems Resurrection of the Dust. Cha nominated his poem "We Used Chalk" for a Pushcart Prize in 2011. [Read]

Joppan George read History in Delhi before reading Film Studies in Kolkata, and it all took a few years of compulsive affinity with the metabolic life of lepisma saccharina that feeds on book leaves. A few of his poems have been published intermittently in college journals and anthologies, at least one of which (reportedly) is still stacked in heaps after going to press because there was not enough money to pay the printer. Occasionally George reads Jose Saramago. And rereads Jose Saramago. Something tells him it is becoming a pathological obsession. At other times he attempts aspirating one-minute-novellas out of thought-bubbles. On regular days he is a graduate student at the Department of History in Princeton University. [Read]

Joseph O. Legaspi is the author of Imago (CavanKerry Press), winner of a Global Filipino Literary Award. Recent poems appeared or are forthcoming in From the Fishouse, jubilat, World Literature Today, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Smartish Pace, PEN International and The Normal School. A Queens, NY resident, he co-founded Kundiman, a non-profit organization serving Asian American poets. Visit his website for more information. [Read]

Julia Cariño is based in Norfolk, Virginia. Although she is a graphic artist by trade, she has been reading and writing poetry since she was a young girl. She finds that her writing tends to deal with liminal spaces – the "in-between" state where the body both negotiates and negates clear definition. These are the things that she holds dear: poetry, music, dark chocolate, wine, magnolia trees, paper-winged moths, crescendos, decrescendos, pictures, memories, synonyms, bridges, pieces of twine, dark wood, shelves, doodles on napkins, bicycles, carnivals, freshly-cut grass, pomegranates, symmetry, sunlight catching on unexpectedly reflective surfaces. Visit her website for more information. [Read]

Julian Stannard is a Reader in English and Creative Writing at the University of Winchester. For many years he taught English and American Literature at the University of Genoa. His most recent collection is The Parrots of Villa Gruber Discover Lapis Lazuli (Salmon, 2011). His work has appeared in TLS, Guardian, Spectator, Poetry Review, Poetry London and Nuova Corrente (Italy). He was awarded the Troubadour Prize for Poetry in 2010. A film of his poem "Sottoripa" made by the Italian film maker Guglielmo Trupia is available here. Stannard spent a couple of years in Hong Kong when he was a child. [Read]

A summer resident of the mountains of North Carolina, Ken Turner has been working outside of North America for nearly twenty years. He has taught in Congo, Pakistan, Ivory Coast, Venezuela and currently, China. His poems have appeared in various publications, including Atlanta Review, Southern Poetry Review, English Journal, Fine Madness, and several anthologies. Recent work can be found in Silk Road, 14 By 14, The Summerset Review and The Literary Bohemian. [Read]

Kim Liao was a 2010-2011 Taiwan Fulbright Research Fellow, and has received writing grants from Harvard and Stanford Universities. Her nonfiction has appeared in Fourth River, Hippocampus, Fringe Magazine, and others. Her essays were short-listed for awards by Bellingham Review and Fourth Genre. She currently lives in New York City, where she is finishing her first book, Girl Meets Formosa, a family memoir and adventure story. You can find out more about her writing projects at GirlMeetsFormosa.com. [Read]

Matthew Wong is currently finishing up his MFA at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His primary medium as an artist is photography, although he is also a poet, painter and critical essayist. In June 2012, he will participate in the School of Creative Media 2012 Annual Graduation Show with his photographic installation, Smoking, comprised of 5 large-scale photographs revolving around the ideas of smoking and addiction as existential emblems of urban life. Visit his website for more information. [View]

Michael Gray is an MFA (Poetry) candidate at Fresno State and a graduate assistant with The Normal School. Last year, he earned a BA from Gonzaga University. He also studies Mandarin Chinese and knows some Cantonese. His other interests include public transportation and iced tea. He attended the 2012 Raleigh Review Writers' Studio Workshop taught by Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar. One of his poems won a 2012 AWP Intro Journals Award (forthcoming in Puerto del Sol) and part of another won the Aurorean's Spring/Summer 2012 Creative Writing Student Outstanding Haiku Contest. [Read]

Michael Tsang received his BA in English and MPhil in Gender Studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is now reading for a PhD degree at the University of Warwick, specializing in postcolonial English literature in Hong Kong. Language and literature are part of his life. He likes to write stories and poems in his spare time, and is devoted to language learning. His ultimate goal is to learn Tibetan and Finnish. Tsang is a Staff Reviewer for Cha. [Read 1 2] [Cha profile]

Owen Cooney is a writer and translator based near New York City. He recently finished an MA programme at Columbia University in East Asia Regional Studies (Japan focus). Cooney worked for a number of years as a translator in Japan, dealing with content as diverse as art, pop music and video games. He is currently working on further translations of Japanese literature and also his own fiction. His translation of Osamu Dazai's "Lantern," another short story from the same series as "Crickets," has been published as an e-book. Visit his website for more information. [Read]

Papa Osmubal writes from Macau. His works, visual and literary, appear in numerous places, online and hardcopy, most recently in Bulatlat and Poor Mojo's Almanac(k). He writes regularly for eK! (electroniKabalen / electroniKapampangan / electroniK...). He is currently working on a collection of modernist papercuts for his planned solo exhibition tentatively called "Nocturnal Voice." [View]

Peter van de Kamp was born in The Hague, Holland. He has taught English and Anglo-Irish Literature at Leiden University, University College Dublin and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. In all, he has published eighteen books. He is the founder of K.I.S.S., the Kerry International Summer School of Living Irish Authors. [Read]

Rumjhum Biswas's prose and poetry have been published in India and abroad, both in print and online. She won first prize for her flash fiction in the 2012 Anam Cara Writers' Retreat Short Fiction Competition. Her poem "Cleavage" was on the long list of the 2006 Bridport Poetry Competition and named a finalist in the 2010 Aesthetica Creative Arts Contest. Her poem "Bones" was nominated by Cha for a Pushcart Prize and she won the first prize for a poetry review contest hosted by the same journal in October 2011. An excerpt from her story "Guitar" was shortlisted in the Art House Competition in August 2010 and her poem "March" was commended in the Writelinks' Spring Fever Competition 2008. Biswas has won prizes in poetry contests in India and has been featured in poetry events in Chennai and Hyderabad. She is one of the ten Indian poets to feature in an exclusive forthcoming anthology edited by Jayant Mahapatra along with Yuyutsu RD Sharma. She blogs at  here and here. She also has a monthly column at Flash Fiction Chronicles. [Read] [Cha profile]

Sarah Stanton grew up in Perth, Western Australia. Halfway through university, she abandoned a promising career in not having much of a career when she transferred from an opera performance course into a Chinese language major, having fallen for the Middle Kingdom more or less overnight. Three years, two exchange programmes and one potential firework accident later, she has settled in Beijing as a freelance translator and editor specialising in contemporary literature. As a writer, she has been published in a variety of magazines, including Voiceworks, Hunger Mountain, H.A.L., dotdotdash and Starry Rhymes (Read This Press). She is a recipient of the Talus Prize and was recently shortlisted for the James White Award. She blogs here and tweets here. [Read]

Stephanie Han, who has an MA and an MFA, is City University of Hong Kong's first PhD candidate in literature. She has worked as a journalist and writing instructor in the US, Hong Kong and Korea. Her creative writing has appeared in DisOrient, KoreAm Journal, Kyoto Journal, Louisville Review, South China Morning Post (Fiction Award), Nimrod International Literary Journal (Katherine Ann Porter Prize), Santa Fe Writer's Project (Fiction Award), Women's Studies Quarterly and other publications. Her writing has been anthologised in Strange Cargo (PEN West Emerging Voices Anthology) and Cheers to Muses (Asian American Women Artists Anthology). Visit her website for more information. [Read]

Born in Bikaner, on 18 August 1965 and educated in Kolkata and Baroda, Vinita Agrawal is an Indian English poet, feature writer and researcher currently living in Delhi. Her poetry has been published in eighteen print and online journals. Her recent publications were in The Taj Mahal Review and the debut issue of the Boston-based Constellations. Her poem has received a nomination for the Best of the Net Awards 2011 by Contemporary Literary Review of India. She quotes the Buddha - "Those born balance like seeds on needle points" when reflecting on existence. [Read] [Cha profile]