Ankur Agarwal is from India and has an MA in Intercultural Communication & Training from INALCO (Paris, France). His poetry can be found in, among other places, Paper Wall, Barnwood Poetry Magazine, Mascara Literary Review, Other Poetry and Halfway Down the Stairs. He also reviews cinema, mostly European and Asian, at Great Movie Reviews. Ankur Agarwal helped select the poetry in the March 2017 issue of Cha. [Cha profile]

Michael Gray won a 2012 AWP Intro Journals Project Award and the 2013 Hot Street Emerging Writers Contest, was nominated for Best New Poets 2014, and named a finalist in The Lit Pub's first Annual Poetry Contest and the SpringGun Press 2014 Open Reading Period. His translations of Yau Ching appear in Shadow Beings (XXX Zines, 2014). His work appears or will appear in Poetry East West, Puerto del Sol, Dogwood, Rock & Sling, Fence, LONTAR, and elsewhere. Michael Gray helped select the fiction and creative non-fiction in the March 2017 issue of Cha. [Cha profile]

Aaron Anfinson is a photographer and a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong. His research is concerned with the greater realignments brought about by the advent of late modernity and the role of language in the construction of State sovereignty and social inequality. Visit his website to see his ongoing work. [Photography]

Originally from Hong Kong, Aaron Chan is currently reading for a PhD in Education at the University of Glasgow. Having taught English in a Hong Kong secondary school for three years, he has decided to turn a new page and return to academia. He is now working on a thesis about the conflicting discourses in and about institutional education as represented in children’s literature. His research interests include children's literature, education and pedagogy. Visit his blog for more information. [Reviews]

Abul Kalam Azad is a poet of Indian origin currently working in Japan, the 'Land of the Rising Sun', gathering grey dots to trace the sinking moons. [Poetry]

Aimee Cando, 21, was born and raised in Quezon City, Philippines, but grew up on the Internet. She communicates primarily through dank memes and maintains a fondness for dogs and hip hop music. She is a student of the University of the Philippines Diliman where she is working on her Masters degree in Creative Writing and a member of its Writers Club. She currently lives in Cubao. [Poetry]

Alistair Noon's most recent publications are The Kerosene Singing (Nine Arches Press) and Surveyors' Riddles, a collaboration with Giles Goodland (Sidekick Books), both from 2015. A pamphlet, Quad, is forthcoming from Longbarrow Press in 2017. He lives in Berlin, where he works as a translator. [Poetry]

Andy Ang (b. 1987) received his degree with Honours from the Department of Chinese at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and is now an educator. In 2012, he founded WhyNot magazine as a platform for new literary voices, and his work is widely published in newspapers and periodicals from Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. He is the author of After Commotion, The Void and Destroy All Gods, and editor of In The Space Of A Poem 2015 and Unpredictable: Fifty best poems (forthcoming). He actively promotes the development of local literature, and hopes to raise its public visibility. [Poetry]

Ankur Agarwal is from India and has an MA in Intercultural Communication & Training from INALCO (Paris, France). His poetry can be found in, among other places, Paper Wall, Barnwood Poetry Magazine, Mascara Literary Review, Other Poetry and Halfway Down the Stairs. He also reviews cinema, mostly European and Asian, at Great Movie Reviews. Agarwal is the guest poetry editor for the March 2017 issue of Cha. [Essays] [Cha profile]

Arthur Lewis Thompson is a member of the editorial team at the London Journal of Fiction. Born and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, he now lives and works in Hong Kong where he conducts linguistic research. Like everyone else, he too keeps a blog and is working on a novel. Visit his website for more information. [Reviews]

Ashish Khetarpal was born in Meerut, India. He studied English Literature at the University of Panjab, and attended University of Rennes 2 in France, where he did research in Historiography and Alternative History. He divides his time between India and Rennes where he is engaged as a language instructor for English, Hindi and French. He is the author of When the Wind Blows and Other Poems. [Poetry]

Deborah Guzzi is a healing facilitator, healing through touch and the written word. She has written three books: The Healing Heart, Heaven & Hell in a Nutshell, and The Hurricane. They are available at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and Prolific Press. Her poetry has appeared in publications in Britain, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Greece, India and the United States. Visit her website for more information. [Poetry]

Denis Wong was born in New York City and raised in Queens and New Jersey. His stories have been published or are forthcoming from Gemini Magazine, Hyphen Magazine, The Margins, Drunken Boat, and Wasafiri Magazine, among others. He lives in Sai Kung, Hong Kong with his wife and son. [Fiction]

Edward Eng is currently reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Warwick. His poetry can be found in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Softblow, amongst other places. He is also a playwright whose plays have been performed at multiple venues in Warwick, and has recently worked on a co-written piece on the UK's response to the refugee crisis that will be restaged at the National Student Drama Festival in Hull in April. [Poetry]

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a second-generation Chinese American from California who now divides her time between Michigan and Hawai'i. She is a contributor and essayist for NBC News Asian America. She has also written for AAPIVoices.com, NewAmericaMedia.org, ChicagoIsTheWorld.org, JACL's PacificCitizen.org and InCultureParent.com. She teaches Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies at University of Michigan. She has published three chapbooks of prose poetry, been included in several anthologies and art exhibitions, and created a multimedia artwork with Jyoti Omi Chowdhury for Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. She has a weakness for a well-crafted argument and a lyrical turn of phrase. Visit her website for more information or follow her on Twitter.  [Creative non-fiction]

Harshal Desai is an artist, entrepreneur and writer who hates the typical 9-5 existence. After quitting his business to hone the world of entrepreneurship and design solutions, he writes to document his thoughts and struggles as he takes on societal norms armed with nothing more than his cheeky wit and undeniable charm. He has published his photography in National Geographic's "Life In Colour" feature and Fine Flu Magazine. Write him a letter at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it [Photography]

Hélder Beja is a writer, editor and reporter with years of experience in covering the Arts. With a degree in Communication from the University of Minho (Portugal), he worked in several Portuguese media (Público, i, Sábado) before moving to Macau in 2010. He's the co-founder of The Script Road - Macau Literary Festival and its current Programme Director. An author himself, Beja won the Macau Daily Times Short Story Award in 2012. His work as a filmmaker, Once Upon a Time in Ka Ho, has been selected for the Macau International Film and Video Festival and has also been shown in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Spain. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Macau CLOSER, an arts & lifestyle magazine, and a contributor to LER, Portugal's main literary magazine. Beja will be guest editing the "Writing Macau" Issue (March 2019) of Cha. [Letter from Macau]

Henrik Hoeg is the current emcee and organiser of Peel Street Poetry, a weekly open mic night for English-language poetry in Hong Kong. His first book, Irreverent Poems for Pretentious People, was a supplementary awardee in the Proverse Prize 2015 and published in April 2016. In addition to his day job as a special needs teacher, he is currently working on his second collection of poetry and his first novel. [African Disapora]

Jan Filart is a graduate of Ateneo de Manila University and aspires to be a writer. Passionate about Asian literature, he writes his own book reviews in a personal literary blog, The Asian Reader. He has a particular interest in translated works from Korea and Japan. Just like most bibliophiles, he also happens to write about Formula One racing in his other personal blog. [Reviews]

Born and grew up in Hong Kong, Jennifer Wong is the author of two collections including Goldfish (Chameleon Press, 2013). She studied English at Oxford University and has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. She is currently working on a PhD on contemporary Chinese diaspora poetry at Oxford Brookes University. In 2014, she received the Young Artist Award in Literary Arts from the Hong Kong Arts and Development Council. She has reviewed poetry for Poetry London and Asian Review of Books. (Photo credit: Tai Ngai Lung) [Interviews]

Jessica Yeung is Associate Professor of Translation at Hong Kong Baptist University. Apart from literary translation, she also translates subtitles for independent Chinese films. She researches on Chinese dissident art and literature, and cultural production of the 'ethnic minorities' in China. She is also a theatre maker. [Translation]

Jhilam Chattaraj is currently working as an Assistant Professor at R.B.V.R.R Women's College, Department of English, Hyderabad. She loves to explore the world through literature, culture, music and photography. Her areas of interest include Diaspora Studies (MPhil) and Popular Indian Culture (PhD). Her academic and creative writings have been published in journals like Muse India, Indian Book Chronicle, Langlit, Eastlit, Indialogue Foundation, Women's Web, Cha and Toasted Cheese Literary Journal. [Interviews]

Joshua Ip is the author of two-and-a-half volumes of poetry from Math Paper Press: sonnets from the singlish UPSIZE EDITION (威力加强版) (2015), making love with scrabble tiles (2013), and sonnets from the singlish (2012), which won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2014. He won the Golden Point Award for English Prose in 2013 for the short story "The Man Who Turned Into a Photocopier", was runner-up for English Poetry in 2011, and received a Honorable Mention for Chinese Poetry in 2015. He has co-edited four poetry anthologies: A Luxury We Cannot Afford (2014), SingPoWriMo 2014: The Anthology (2014), SingPoWriMo 2015: The Anthology (2015), and A Luxury We Must Afford (2016). He is currently working on his first graphic novel, Ten Stories Below (2016). [Essays]

Karen Fang teaches literature and film at the University of Houston (USA) and is the author of Arresting Cinema: Surveillance in Hong Kong Film (Stanford University Press 2017). [Essays]

Karen Ma is a Beijing-based Chinese-American writer who holds an MA from the University of Washington in Chinese Language and Literature. She is the author of Excess Baggage (China Books, 2013), a semi-autobiographical novel based loosely on her family's experience in the 1990s as Chinese immigrants living in Japan. She writes frequently about Chinese culture and literature for international publications, including The International Herald Tribune, The Japan Times, Kyoto Journal, NPR and South China Morning Post. She is also a film critic for VCinema and teaches a course on Chinese culture and film at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies. Visit her website for more information. [Interviews]

Karla Comanda is a Vancouver-based poet and translator. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. Her work has recently been published in Grain Magazine and SAD Mag. Originally from the Philippines, she is currently the fiction editor for Ricepaper Magazine. [Poetry]

Kevin Tan Kwan Wei currently contributes articles to Your Commonwealth, a youth blog supported by The Commonwealth Youth Programme. He has served as a volunteer judge for The Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition, and is one of the inaugural participants of the Young Critics Mentorship Programme. He was recently awarded the Leading Change Journalism Bursary 2017 by the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust. [Reviews]

Lianhua Wei grew up in the beautiful countryside of Fujian province. She now lives in Lhasa and works as an online landscape designer. She loves the people, culture and images of Tibet, and travels in the province when she has time. Her dream is to open a flower shop there and to write a novel about the people there. [Photography]

Michael O'Sullivan teaches English literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and is a co-editor of the academic journal, Hong Kong Studies. He writes creatively on literature and education and also through poems and short stories. His recent book is Academic Barbarism, Universities and Inequality. [Reviews] [Cha profile]

Michael Tsang is a native of Hong Kong, and holds a PhD from the University of Warwick, researching on Hong Kong English writing. His broader research interests are on postcolonial and world literature with an Asian focus. He writes stories and poems in his spare time, and is always interested in languages, literatures and cultures. Michael is a Staff Reviewer for Cha and a co-editor of Hong Kong Studies. Visit his Warwick profile for more. [Reviews] [Cha profile]

Natalie Liu is currently reading for an MPhil in English (Literary Studies) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is the assistant director for Moliere's The Learned Ladies with the local theatre group The Shadow Players, set to tour Adelaide in May 2017. Her next project is Tennesse Williams's The Glass Menagerie, also with The Shadow Players. [Reviews]

Nicholas Chan is currently a research postgraduate at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He aspires to become a professor specialising in literary studies and film studies in the future. He is interested in English writings of all sorts, particularly novels, poetry and short stories. Besides his immense interest in academic research, he also hopes to publish a collection of works that bring meaning to life one day, addressing issues related to culture, gender and social affairs. [Reviews]

Nina Atimah is a watcher of cartoons, a friend of chocolate and a lover of sunny days. Willing and able to dance to any Michael Jackson song, she is an advocate for cultural diversity and an activist for all things African. Born in Nigeria, Atimah has been writing poetry and short stories since she was eight and publications have ranged from the high school bugle to her mom's refrigerator. New to Hong Kong and working in financial services, writing now happens between the unspeakable hours of 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., ranging from delicate haikus to verses that challenge and provoke. When not at work, Atimah can be found 'not hiking', struggling to learn Mandarin, in church, boarding a flight or exploring Hong Kong. Above all else, she remains filled with faith and hope. [African Disapora]

Pema Tseden is a native Tibetan of the Amdo Tibetan region of the present-day Qinghai Province. He is a bilingual fiction writer in Tibetan and Chinese. He is also the first film director who has made films in the Tibetan language without providing a dubbed Chinese version in China. His films The Silent Holy Stones, The Search, Old Dog and Tharlo have garnered major international prizes. His latest film Tharlo is also the first Tibetan language film on release in cinemas in Mainland China. [Fiction]

Peter Kennedy has taught at the University of Hong Kong since 1991. He currently teaches courses on C20th English poetry and James Joyce. Before coming to Hong Kong, Peter taught in Greece, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Brunei and China. He holds degrees from the universities of Bristol, Wales, Sussex, Essex and Trinity College, Dublin. [Poetry]

Quincy Carroll lives in Oakland, CA. His debut novel, Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside, won the Silver Medal for Contemporary Fiction in the 2016 IPPY Book Awards. A second edition is forthcoming from Camphor Press in April 2017. "Hard Sleeper", published in Issue 35 of Cha, is from his current work in progress, a novel about a returned expatriate trying to readjust to life back home in the U.S. while reminiscing about his time in China. Visit his website for more information. [Fiction]

Ray Granlund holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Rice University and a Master of Arts in Cultural Policy, Relations and Diplomacy from Goldsmiths, University of London. A bilingual childhood in Texas, in-depth study of opera and art song and eight years as a cultural entrepreneur in Macau have contributed to a life-long love affair with languages. Ray has served as the Portuguese to English literary translator for The Script Road - Macau Literary Festival for the past four years. He now resides in London, working as a multilingual editor and musicologist serving the classical music recording industry. [Translation]

Reid Mitchell is the author of the novel A Man Under Authority and numerous poems, some of which have been published in Cha. He teaches in China. [Poetry] [Cha profile]

Shikhandin is an Indian writer. Her book of stories, Immoderate Men, has recently been published by Speaking Tiger Books. [Poetry]

Raised in India, Siddharth Sridhar now works as an infectious diseases specialist in Hong Kong. When he is not treating patients, he enjoys writing about his perspectives on life, work, travel, and all the things in between. His travel writing has been featured in Wanderlust Magazine and his work on the medical humanities has appeared in humanities journals. He is currently exploring the literary possibilities of the strange polymorphisms of love in big cities and bigger hearts through a series of short pieces. [Fiction]

Sithuraj Ponraj writes fiction in both English and Tamil. His first collection of short stories in Tamil Maariligal (The Unchangeables) won the 2016 Singapore Literature Prize for Tamil Fiction as well as the 2017 Karikar Chozhan Award for Tamil Fiction. His first collection of Tamil poetry Kaatrai Kadanthai won the 2016 Singapore Literature Merit Prize. He has published two other novels in Tamil. His first collections of poetry in Spanish and English are due out in April 2017. He is currently finishing a Tamil novel Derrida and an Advertisement Length Death as well as a collection of short stories Ramon Becomes an Angel. [Poetry]

Sonia FL Leung holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Creative Non-fiction) from the City University of Hong Kong. Her "Home Amongst Lost Souls" won the third prize of the Hong Kong's Top Story 2015, an annual writing competition organised by RTHK Radio 3. In 2016, her "Diamond Hill" won the second prize of the same competition. Her first publication, "The Moon in a Dog's Eye", appeared in Mala Literary Journal, as well as Afterness: Literature from the New Transnational Asia. Leung is working on her first book, a memoir of her coming of age story, titled The Letter from Rainbow Village. [Creative non-fiction]

T. De Los Reyes's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rabbit Catastrophe Review, Hawai’i Review, Philippine Free Press, Philippine Graphic, and Verses Typhoon Yolanda, an anthology published by Meritage Press. Her work has been listed as a Notable Manuscript in the 2016 BOAAT Chapbook Prize. She was a recipient of the Maningning Miclat Awards for her poetry. She lives and writes in Manila, Philippines. [Poetry]

Born in Singapore, Theophilus Kwek has published four volumes of poetry—most recently The First Five Storms, which won the New Poets' Prize in 2016. He also won Martin Starkie Prize in 2014, the Jane Martin Prize in 2015, and was co-winner of the Second Berfrois Poetry Prize. He has served as President of the Oxford University Poetry Society, and is currently Co-Editor of Oxford Poetry, Poetry Reader at The London Magazine, as well as Chief Executive Assistant at Asymptote. He is pursuing a Master's in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at Oxford University. [Poetry] [Translation] [Interviews]

Tom KE Chan is a student studying in AAEPC at the Community College of City University of Hong Kong. He was Chief Editor of the AAEPC literary magazine, Kaleidoscope, in 2016, and was chosen as the Sham Shui Po Outstanding Youth of 2017. Chan is looking forward to new possibilities in life as an aspiring writer. He has also taken part in various stage performances, including his first drama production, The Pandora's Box, which was adapted for the stage for the 66th Drama and Music Fiesta of St. Mark's School in 2015. He is currently working on a series of poems to bring together a story of human nature and love. [African Disapora]

Vishal Nanda is a writer and spoken word performer in between being an indie game designer, teacher, and editor. He spends his time writing poetry, scripts, screenplays, plays, short stories, novels and the like, as he cannot quite help himself. He has performed spoken word poetry at a variety of events, including TEDxWanChai, comedy shows, fundraisers and on RTHK Radio 3. He can usually be found nervously performing In Lan Kwai Fong most Wednesdays with the other Peel Street Poets. [African Disapora]

Yuemin He is a Professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College, where she teaches literature and composition. Her writings include publications in The Emergence of Buddhist American Literature, Religion and Arts, Inquiry, and Oxford Anthology of Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (2nd edition). In her spare time, she does some creative writing. Her short stories "Accidental Sex Education" and "Love When Birds Can't Fly" were published in Yuan Yang and Northern Virginia Review respectively. [Fiction]