Arthur Leung helped select the poetry. See his Cha profile.

Reid Mitchell, Consulting Editor of Cha, helped select the prose. See his Cha profile.

Bob Bradshaw hails from Florida, where he had the great pleasure of taking classes under novelist Wyatt Wyatt and poet David Posner. He defected from Florida decades ago and now lives in California. His poetry has been published in Eclectica, Apple Valley Review, Mississippi Review, Paumonok Review, Pedestal Magazine, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, and many other publications (see here for his recent works). He is currently working on a poetry manuscript titled Van Gogh in Love. Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it [Read] [Cha's profile]

Graeme Brasher grew up in Port Lincoln, South Australia. He has been a teacher of English and Chinese in international schools for thirteen years, in Brunei, Germany and China. At present he is Head of English at Renaissance College in Hong Kong. He writes sporadically for the sheer enjoyment of creation and in the probably vain hope of one day saying something new. His poetry has most recently been published in The Foliate Oak. [Read]

Originally from China, Vivian Ding Xiaoyu is an MPhil student at the University of Hong Kong. She loves reading and writing poetry and enjoys spending her day-offs on high terraces, near the waters, and in the dark corner of the theater. Her poem “Lesen” and play “Shackle and Shelter” were published in The Tree (2010), an anthology of works by Creative Writing Class 2010 at School of English, the University of Hong Kong. Visit her website for more details. [Read] [Cha's profile]

Randy Gonzales is a poet who was born and raised in New Orleans, but has spent most his adult life residing in places like Fukui, Yongin, Abu Dhabi, Pohang, Calamba,  Alabang, and Al Ain. He has recently returned to the United States to pursue a PhD in English at the University of Southern Mississippi. His writing touches the intersections of culture / place / identity / human relationships, and occasionally looks to re/connect him with a lost Filipino heritage. Visit his website for more details. [Read]

Ram Govardhan is currently scripting his second novel and a bunch of short stories. His first novel Rough with the Smooth was longlisted for the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize while his short stories have appeared in Asian and African journals. He works with Hansa Research Group, Madras/Chennai, India. Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it [Read]

Born in Ahmedabad, India, Vineet "the Troubadour" Kaul has been exploring words as his medium of expression through poetry, prose and music (guitarist/lyricist). He works as a journalist/freelance copywriter and performs as the Troubadour that is fast becoming his pen name as well. Though 25, he has been writing since the age of 13 and more than a decade later his poetry has or will be featured in Calliope Nerve, Asia Writes, the brown critique, The Asian Age, the Maynard, Bearing North (an anthology published by Midwest Literary Magazine) and many other newspapers and magazines. He won the Asian Age All India Poetry contest (and runner up twice). He is currently working on his manuscript of poems that is slated for release around September 2011 (tentatively titled Tug of Warp). [Read]

Jason Eng Hun Lee is a co-ordinator and member of the OutLoud and Joyce is not Here poetry groups in Hong Kong and has featured regularly in the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival. He has been published in the U.K., Singapore and Hong Kong, and was nominated by Cha for a Pushcart Prize. His first collection was a finalist in the HKU Poetry Prize 2010. [Read 1 2]

Jeffrey Thomas Leong's poems have appeared in Crab Orchard, Cimarron Review, Flyway, Bamboo Ridge, Manzanita, Asian Pacific American Journal, nycBigCityLit, and other publications. He received his B.A. in Asian American Studies and his J.D., both from the University of California, Berkeley. In his writing, Leong explores the mysteries of Chinese immigration to California, including his parents from Guangdong province. His father spoke four dialects of Cantonese, and Leong spoke the Zhongshan city dialect fluently until attending kindergarten and public school. He relearned Cantonese (Guangzhou city dialect) while attending UC Berkeley. He lives with his wife and daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area. [Read]

Abigail Licad grew up in the Philippines and immigrated to California with her family at age 13. She received her B.A. from UC Berkeley and her M.Phil in literature from Oxford University. Her poetry and book reviews have recently appeared in Calyx, Elevate Difference, and Smartish Pace. She is a books editor at Hyphen, an Asian American culture and politics magazine. [Read 1 2]

Sarawak-born Margaret Hui Lian Lim, who has a B.A. in English from the University of British Columbia and a B.Ed. from Queen's, Kingston, Ontario, is a children's book writer from Malaysia. She is the author of the PAYAH Rain Forest adventure series. "Nonah or the Ghost of Gunung Mulu", her most recent, has been selected by the International Board on Books for Young People(IBBY) for their 2010 Honour List in a ceremony held in Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Lim's essay "Portrait of a Children's Book Author as a Young Reader" was published in the September 2010 issue of Cha. Her piece was the inspiration for the editorial for that issue. [Read]

Reid Mitchell is a published historian, poet, and novelist who currently teaches at the University at Albany. He is Consulting Editor of Cha. [Read 1 2] [Cha's profile]

Vineetha Mokkil is a fiction writer and reviewer based in New Delhi, India. Her short stories have been published in Santa Fe Writers Project Journal and Why We Don't Talk, an anthology of contemporary Indian short fiction (Rupa and Co, New Delhi, August 2010) and in the Asia Writes Project. Poems translated by her have appeared in Indian Love Poems (Knopf/Everyman's Library, 2005). Her first novel is in the pipeline. [Read]

Vandana Nambiar was born in Kerala, India, in 1977. She holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Calicut, and a Master’s in Communication and Journalism from the University of Kerala. She has had careers in media and academics as a television news writer, feature editor and communications lecturer. She tries, at present, to freelance as a web writer but writes fiction almost all of the time. She lives in Mumbai. [Read]

Born in Goa to a Serbian mother and German father, Mary-Jane Newton spent the first years of her life in India. She subsequently grew up in Germany and England, and now grows up in Hong Kong. With a background in linguistics, communication and cultural studies, it is her aim, always, to meet her reader elsewhere, other than where words command us: beyond and beneath their meanings. Newton is married and works as an editor. She is a committee member of the Women in Publishing Society, Hong Kong and regularly reads at Poetry OutLoud events. Her first collection of poetry, Of Symbols Misused, will be published by Proverse Hong Kong in March 2011. [Read 1 2 3]

Annysa Ng was born in Hong Kong. She studied at Staatliche Akademie der Bildenen Künste in Germany and the School of Visual Arts in New York. She was awarded 2009/10 Fellowship from the Urban Artist Initiative / NYC, Osaka Governor Prize, Fellowship at National Academy Museum in NY, and Residency at Egon Schiele Art Centrum in Czech Republic. Her works have been exhibited internationally and were collected by Deutsche Bank, the Stuttgart City Library, and Holtzbrinck GmbH & Co.KG, Germany. In 2008, she was named one of the "Ten Talents to Watch" in London Times. She now lives in New York. Visit her website for more information. [View]

William (Billy) Noseworthy is currently a graduate student hovered over his laptop somewhere (preferably) very close to Memorial Library in Madison, Wisconsin. Hailing from the hills of Vermont, Noseworthy received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 2007. He travelled to Vietnam for the first time in 2006, and returned during the academic year of 2008-9 to live and work in Ho Chi Minh City. After escaping the dust of the backpacker district he took refuge in District 3 next to a dilapidated Mahayana temple. Inspired by the constant milieu of the metropole, he moved to Brooklyn, NY the following year to discover that yes, there really were reasons to return to the folds of academe. Noseworthy's research interests include; lesser known languages (currently studying Akhar Thrah), lesser told narratives (Hoang Minh Chinh's "deathbed conversion" to Buddhism), and lesser seen sights (the "Crazy House" in Da Lat, Vietnam). More broadly he is interested in histories of identity, Diaspora, poetry, linguistics, and syncretic religious practices. [Read 1 2]

Michael O'Sullivan is from Ireland and he teaches literature in Hong Kong. He writes short stories, poems and essays and he has published a book on James Joyce and Marcel Proust and a book on Michel Henry. His essays appear in such journals as Mosaic and Parallax. [Read 1 2] [Cha profile]

Born in Kerala, South India in 1971, Shelton Pinheiro has been writing poems while working as a Creative Director in advertising. Consisting of scrap-like slices, the poems, as he says, 'have stubbornly squeezed themselves through the fissures of my life and career over the last decade - often in spite of myself'. The predominant concerns of this collection are about the often unnoticed incidentals and the in-betweens of urban life. Titleless, and short, he prefers to identify the poems by numbers. The lead vocalist in an ethnic Indian spiritual band, he writes about poetry and life at shelspace. He lives and works in the city of Kochi in India. [Read]

Divya Rajan's work has been published or are forthcoming in Poetic Chicago anthology, Burnt Bridge, Ann Arbor Review, Danse Macabre, The Times of India, Femina, Vivek, and many others. She has been a recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination in addition to other writing awards, and currently lives in Chicago where she co-edits poetry at The Furnace Review. Her work has also been featured on Wordslingers, Chicago Public Radio, Accents Radio Show and Whale Sound. Lately, she has been ecstatic about artist Judithe Hernandez's noble gesture of renaming a series of paintings, currently being exhibited at the National Museum of Mexican Arts, Chicago, as The Weight of Silence series, after her poem. [Read] [Cha's profile]

Krishnakumar Sankaran is based in Mumbai, India. His work has been published by nether, Muse India and New Aesthetic, among others. He also has two poems in Rupa Publication’s Writing Love anthology. [Read]

Shivani Sivagurunathan is a Malaysian writer who lectures at University Putra Malaysia. Her creative work has been published in numerous international magazines and journals. Her poetry chapbook, Chiaroscuro, published by Bedouin Books, came out in August 2010. Her short story "Catching Iguanas" is expected in the fourth anniversary issue of Cha (November 2011). Both "The Bat Whisperer" and "Catching Iguanas" are from her short story collection, Wildlife on Coal Island, which will be published later this year. Sivagurunathan is currently working on a novel set in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. [Read] 

David Sutherland's  poetry has been published in publications including The Midwest Quarterly, The Cortland Review, The American Literary Review, The Adirondack Review, Poetry Magazine, The Chiron Review and others. His work has been awarded a Rhysling Award and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Sutherland's latest collection Steel Umbrellas was published by Archer Books of Santa Rosa, CA, and he is busy finalizing a third collection he hopes to have out by the end of 2011. [Read]

Christopher Szabla is a frequent contributor of writing and photography to Hong Kong-based Urbanphoto.net. His photos have been featured by, most recently, France24 and the West Harlem Art Fund, and his writing has appeared in Maisonneuve and other publications. Born in Buffalo, New York, he later moved to Boston and spent time studying and working in Berlin and Cairo. A graduate of Columbia and Harvard Universities, he currently lives and works in New York. [View]

Michael Tsang is a Hong Kong native and received his B.A. in English from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is now pursuing an MPhil degree in gender studies, working on novels by Murakami Haruki. His poetry and short story have been published in CU Writing in English Volume IX(2009). 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. [Read 1 2]

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. She is a Staff Reviewer for Cha. [Read] [Cha's profile]

Steve Wing is a visual artist and writer who lives in Florida. He suppresses the recurring urge to go beachcombing in order to remain employed at an academic institution. His work often reflects the quietly extraordinary aspects of the everyday world. His images have appeared in  BluePrint Review, qarrtsiluni, Foliate Oak, MiCrow, Lantern Review, and other online journals. Visit his webpage for more information. [View]

Nicholas Wong is the winner of Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition and a nominee for Best of the Net (2010) and Best of Web (2011) anthologies. His poetry is forthcoming in Assaracus: Journal of Gay Poetry, Prime Number Magazine, San Pedro River Review, Lambda Literary Foundation, Third Wednesday and the Sentinel Champion Series #5. He is currently an MFA Candidate at the City University of Hong Kong and a poetry editor at THIS Literary Magazine. Visit his website for more details. [Read] [Cha's profile]

Elaine Woo is an emerging Canadian-born writer residing in Vancouver. She will graduate from the University of British Columbia's creative writing program in 2011. Her poetry has appeared in many Canadian literary magazines including Canada's only Asian cultural magazine Ricepaper, as well as Gusts: Contemporary Tanka, Ascent Aspirations, one cool word and http://christineleclerc.com. She was the opening presenter at a children's literature conference at UBC in May 2010. She also read at the literary festival, Word on the Street, in Vancouver in September 2010. Upcoming work will appear in Through an Open Door Anthology in Fall 2011. Inspired by her essay on North American graphic and manga artists for Cha, she is currently working on her own graphic novel. Comics, graphic novels and manga are a world-wide phenomenon but have only recently begun to gain attention and respect in Canada and the United States. Her piece in Cha hopes to focus international attention on the outstanding artwork and writing of the featured artists. [Read]

Yip Wai Shan is a Hong Kong-based photographer who enjoys discovering the unusuals in the usuals through photography. While discovering, she may forget to walk or talk to people around her and they may regard her as either lunatic or rude. Yip is now a Master of English Studies student in the University of Hong Kong and she sometimes wishes that she can submit photos instead of essays to her teachers. (Photo of Yip by Benny Thong) [View] [Cha's profile]

Changming Yuan is a two-time Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Politics and Poetics (2009). He grew up in rural China and published several books before moving to canada. With a PhD in English, Yuan currently teaches writing in Vancouver and has had poems appearing in The Cortland Review, Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, London Magazine and nearly 300 other literary publications worldwide. [Read]