Biography

Wong grew up in Calgary

Calgary

Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

, Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

 and currently lives in Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

, British Columbia

British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

. She is the author of two books of poetry, monkeypuzzle and forage. Her work investigates the relationships between social justice, ecology, decolonization, and contemporary poetics. Wong is an assistant professor at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, teaching Critical and Cultural Studies

Cultural studies

Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...

. She has another course in development, Cultivating Ecological, Cross-Cultural, and Interdisciplinary Contemplations of Water. She is also a visiting instructor at the University of Miami

University of Miami

The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, a medical campus in Miami city proper at Civic Center, and an oceanographic research facility on Virginia Key., the university currently enrolls 15,629 students in 12...

.

Education

Wong graduated with a BA (Hons) in 1990 from the University of Calgary. She received Masters degrees in 1992 from the University of Alberta

University of Alberta

The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, its first president, it is widely recognized as one of the best universities in Canada...

 and in 1996 from the University of British Columbia

University of British Columbia

The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...

. In 2002 she received her PhD from Simon Fraser University

Simon Fraser University

Simon Fraser University is a Canadian public research university in British Columbia with its main campus on Burnaby Mountain in Burnaby, and satellite campuses in Vancouver and Surrey. The main campus in Burnaby, located from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and has more than 34,000...

.

monkeypuzzle

Wong's first poetry collection, monkeypuzzle, was published by Press Gang in 1998. Reviewer Sook C. Kong in Herizons called it "a huge achievement." Mark Libin for Canadian Literature

Canadian Literature (journal)

Canadian Literature is a quarterly of criticism and review published out of the University of British Columbia.Canadian Literature was founded in 1959 by George Woodcock, who produced 73 issues before retiring in 1977. After Woodcock's retirement, the University of British Columbia invited William...

agreed that the collection "does indeed, as the book jacket declares, announce a promising new voice in Canadian literature." Wong's poems in the volume address her identity as a bisexual Asian woman.

forage

forage, a second collection, was published in 2007; it explores how ecological crises relate to the injustices of the international political landscape. In Wong's words, "the next shift may be the biggest one yet, the union of the living, from mosquito to manatee to mom." Aaron Giovannone in Canadian Literature called the book "a dynamic mixture of styles .... [that] coheres because of the author’s voice, which is emboldened by a sense of sheer affront and the need to find “ground to push against, red earth, / bloody earth, stolen earth.”" The book won the 2008 Dorothy Livesay

Dorothy Livesay

Dorothy Kathleen May Livesay, was a Canadian poet who twice won the Governor General`s Award in the 1940s, and was "senior woman writer in Canada" during the 1970s and 1980s.-Life:...

 Prize.

Wong and the Environment

Wong's poetry often addresses her relationship with her environment. Her poems show a close connection with nature and a support for local product, while expressing distaste for genetically modified food

Genetically modified food

Genetically modified foods are foods derived from genetically modified organisms . Genetically modified organisms have had specific changes introduced into their DNA by genetic engineering techniques...

s. In forage, her poem 'the girl who ate rice almost every day' encourages the reader to look up Monsanto in the US patent database, and see how many patents there are for genetically modified foods, including the type of foods affected. There is also a poem, 'canola queasy' dedicated to Percy Schmeiser

Percy Schmeiser

Percy Schmeiser is a farmer from Bruno, Saskatchewan, Canada. He specializes in breeding and growing canola. He became an international symbol and spokesperson for independent farmers' rights and the regulation of transgenic crops during his protracted legal battle with agrichemical company...

, the Saskatchewan farmer sued by Monsanto because he intentionally propagated genetically engineered canola

Canola

Canola refers to a cultivar of either Rapeseed or Field Mustard . Its seeds are used to produce edible oil suitable for consumption by humans and livestock. The oil is also suitable for use as biodiesel.Originally, Canola was bred naturally from rapeseed in Canada by Keith Downey and Baldur R...

 that had blown into his fields. Her work challenges the reader to think about how they effect their environment. For instance, in 'sort by day burn by night' Wong brings attention to Guiyu

Guiyu

Guiyu is a town on the South China Sea coast, infamous in the global environmentalist community for its reception of E-waste.-Administration:...

 village, a small village in China whose main profit comes from disassembling circuit boards, usually with a sharp rock because they cannot afford a hammer. When asked about her own computer use Wong notes, "as someone who relies heavily on computers, I am implicated in the degradation and eventual destruction of ecosystems (mining for coltan

Coltan

Coltan is the industrial name for columbite–tantalite, a dull black metallic mineral from which the elements niobium and tantalum are extracted. The niobium-dominant mineral is columbite, hence the "col" half of the term...

)", but writes to try to "reconcile [her] intent (to work toward peace and social justice) with [her] consumption patterns as a citizen in North America".

1998

• ACWW Emerging Writer Award for Poetry
• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
• Fellowship

1997

• Canada Council
  Canada Council
  The Canada Council for the Arts, commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown Corporation established in 1957 to act as an arts council of the government of Canada, created to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts. It funds Canadian artists and...
  
   Literary Arts Development Grant
• Willard Ireland Prize
• Asian-Canadian Writers Workshop Emerging Writers Award for monkeypuzzle

Books

• forage. Nightwood Editions, 2007. ISBN 0889712131
• monkeypuzzle. Vancouver: Press Gang, 1998. ISBN 0889740887.

Journals

• "Decolonizasian: Reading First Nations and Asian Relations in Literature", in Canadian Literature, forthcoming (issue 1999, March 2009).
• "Market Forces and Powerful Desires: Reading Evelyn Lau's Cultural Labour", in Kam Louie and Tseen Khoo (eds.), Culture, Identity, Commodity: Diasporic Chinese Literatures in English. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP. 2005.
• "Re Sounding Dissent", in Open Letter, 2004.
• "Troubling Domestic Limits: Reading Border Fictions Alongside Salt Fish Girl by Larissa Lai
  Larissa Lai
  Larissa Lai is a Canadian writer, critic, and professor.Born in La Jolla, California, she grew up in St. John's, Newfoundland. She attended the University of British Columbia and, in 1990, graduated with a B.A. in Sociology. Subsequently, she earned her MA from the University of East Anglia, and...
  
  ", in BC Studies 140 (Winter 2003/04): 109-24.
• "Globalization and Poverty as Violence Against Women." in Paul Taylor (ed.) The Heart of the Community: the Best of the Carnegie Newsletter. Vancouver: New Star Books, 2003. 227-28.
• "Historical fictions, or when is an arrival not an arrival?" in K. Love (ed.) Facing History: Portraits from Vancouver. Vancouver: Presentation House and Arsenal Pulp Press
  Arsenal Pulp Press
  Arsenal Pulp Press is a Canadian independent book publishing company, based in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company publishes a broad range of titles in both fiction and non-fiction, and is noted for founding the annual Three-Day Novel Contest .Authors who have been published by Arsenal Pulp ...
  
  , 2002. 38-39.
• "Influences", in Contemporary Verse 2 25.1 (Summer 2002): 79-80.
• "Partial Responses to the Global Movement of People", in West Coast Line 34.3, No. 33 (Winter 2001): 105-19.
• "Market Forces and Powerful Desires: Reading Evelyn Lau's Cultural Labour", in Essays on Canadian Writing 73 (Spring 2001): 122-40.
• "The I in Migrant", in West Coast Line 33.3, No. 30 (Winter 2000): 105-8.
• Interview, by Larissa Lai. In West Coast Line 33.3, No. 30 (Winter 2000): 72-82.
• "An Intelligent and Humane Response", in Kinesis (November 1999): 12, 17.
• "Writing History in Fiction", in Rice paper
  Ricepaper
  Ricepaper is currently the only Canadian literary magazine with a focus on Asian-Canadian arts and culture. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, it is published quarterly and features articles, literature, poetry, artwork and photography written by or written about writers and artists of primarily...
  
  4.1 (1998): 33.
• "Asian Heritage Month in Vancouver: Building Community", in Kinesis (1997): 16.
• "Jumping on Hyphens", in Makeda Silvera (ed.) The Other Woman: Women of Colour in Contemporary Canadian Literature. Toronto: Sister Vision Press, 1994. 117-53.
• "Have You Eaten Yet? Two Interviews", in Edna Alford and Claire Harris (eds.) Kitchen Talk. Red Deer: Red Deer College Press, 1992. 149-57.

External links

• Rita Wong's homepage