Publications - Steph Wong Ken

Fiction

Zero Hour

"A transfer student from another Catholic high school, Rose McCraig liked to talk about the sickly saints, the holy anorexics who starved themselves for God."

Published in Joyland

Face

"Pam pulls out her phone and creates new profiles for us, with fresh names. In the description, she writes: Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield are ready to play."

Published in Cosmonaut's Avenue

Awakenings

“She looks me over on my third night visit to the infirmary. Her white outfit is still half on. The cigarette in her mouth is an orange hole in her perfect face."

Published in Pithead Chapel

Beating Heart

"She sits in the dark next to her date and watches women die by a mysterious force, a hairy hand, a body in a black spandex suit. Many of the movies are old, from before her time, and timeless."

Published in Ninth Letter (print)

Good Little Animals

"Our mother called us two sides of the same coin, the moon and the sun, the rabbit and the rat."

Published in The Rumpus

Image credit: Peter Witte

Heal My Life

"Before taping, I assure the producers I have a sharp mind and excellent eyesight, strong enough to see an audience member and connect, to know who to sway."

Published in Juked

Vacation

"Small miracles, she thinks as she crash lands into the pool. Paradise."

Published in Moss

"Remember that day cousin Steve, a sushi chef in San Francisco, accidentally chopped off the top of his thumb and they had to graft skin from his ass to cover it up, and we spent the entire summer calling him ass thumb?"

Published in Permanent Collection, The Esker Gallery

Image: Detail of Michelle Bui's Naked Excess (2022)

Essays, Interviews & Reviews

Root Cause

"Learning about cassava’s toxic side, I grew to appreciate its dual power—a means of survival for the Taíno people, even if that meant not living."

Published in The Walrus

Trash Intimacies

"How do the things we throw away return to us in different forms? How then does art respond to what is disposable, ignored or forgotten?"

Published in Canadian Art

TikTok Recipe Box

"The gap between cooks of colour and the mainstream is stubbornly large, but social media is ushering in a new era for Asian creators."

Published in The Walrus

Call to Witness

"Some nights a police officer follows him silently for twenty minutes, only pulling away once my father makes the cautious signal to turn into the alleyway to his home."

Published in Maisonneuve

Community is never neutral: Placemaking in Chinatowns Across Canada

"Chinatowns have persisted not by the grace of tourists or city officials, but through a network of family associations and grassroots organizations operating in hidden spaces..."

Published in C-Magazine

Imperfect Archives: Lilian Leung and Linda Zhang

"For Leung and Zhang, creating intentionally imperfect VRs of Chinatown speaks to their larger project of moving past superficial representations, and framing the built space not for its real-estate value but for its time-worn aesthetics and fading presence.”

Published in Momus

The Line Between "Invasive" and "Native" Blurs

"Not all invasive plant species are damaging to Toronto’s ecosystems. Treating them like they are could do more harm than good."

Published in The Local

Respectability will not save you

"Fragments of Epic Memory feels hyper aware of the trap of performing for white tourist consumption, rejecting the romanticism of “mysterious islands” for a more nuanced, layered presentation. "

Published in Blackflash Expanded