Short Fiction & Humor

“Cold Turkey” (excerpt) Lit Hub . . . Jane gets questionable advice on getting over an ex-girlfriend

“Go Slow” (excerpt) Marie Claire . . . Fake IDs, a hoopty named Shamu, learning to drink soju

“Kenji’s Notebook” Electric Literature . . . Fiona takes care of a very sick friend in New York

“Clairvoyance” The Cut . . . Fiona’s pregnant and Jane feels happy and weird about it

“The Night Market” Georgia Review . . . Jane visits her father in Taipei and sees a new side of him

“Doppelgängers” Guernica . . . Fiona is haunted all over New York by visions of a former lover

“Korean Boys I’ve Loved” Apogee . . . A married dentist, an aspiring screenwriter, Shin ramen with Kraft cheese singles, etc.

“Please Consider Me for Your Racial Ambassador Position” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency . . . joke cover letter written by real Asian American woman

“Rejected ‘XYZ vs MFA’ Think Piece Pitches” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency . . . MFA industrial complex non-think piece

Essays

“How to Stay, When to Vanish” Criterion Channel . . . Bi Gan’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, and the romance of recursive storytelling

“A Place to Post Up” Image Magazine, Los Angeles Times . . . the nostalgia and subversive possibilities of eating in the mall food court

“Playlist” Largehearted Boy . . . listening to Mos Def’s BLACK ON BOTH SIDES (on repeat, no skips) the summer I interned for a Hollywood producer

“Letter of Recommendation: The Subjunctive” New York Times Magazine . . . annual “I love you” texts, the meaning of timelessness, and an abortion

“Grieving on Main” Image Magazine, Los Angeles Times . . . on losing a friend to suicide and a deranged social media post

“Amid the Pandemic, Seeing Myself Without Makeup” Refinery29 . . . how I recognized my real face in photos, for once

“Sex Work Is Care Work” GQ . . . on the Asian women massage parlor workers slain in Atlanta and the labor of giving care

“Bling Empire and the Energizing Potential of Asian American Mediocrity” Harper’s Bazaar . . . why a middlebrow reality show about rich, boring Asians in LA is exactly what I want to watch

“A Year in Reading” The Millions . . . re-reading Toni Morrison’s JAZZ and other books that helped me get through hellish 2020

Features & Reviews

“Becoming Asian American, From ‘Neither/Nor’ to ‘Both/And’” New York Times Book Review . . . BITING THE HAND, Julia Lee’s memoir on growing up Korean American within a Black/white racial hierarchy

“Strip Down, Rise Up” Lux Magazine . . . report from the picket line with the topless dancers striking for safe working conditions in North Hollywood, CA

“2022 Influences: Literature” Bomb . . . Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed’s “Aunties with Deadly Stare” paintings are playful, beautiful, and political all at once

“American Stories, Coast to Coast: ‘Heartbroke,’ by Chelsea Bieker; ‘Valleyesque,’ by Fernando A. Flores; and ‘Proof of Me,’ by Erica Plouffe Lazure“ New York Times Book Review . . . three great 2022 short stories collections!

“Viet Thanh Nguyen on the Joys and Challenges of Writing About Sex” GQ . . . questions for VTN on writing horny scenes and other craft considerations in THE COMMITTED

“Rituals of Style: Cartoonist Yumi Sakugawa” The Margins . . . clothes, Asian femme culture, futurism, ancestor worship

“Actress Naomi Ko Wanted to See More Stories from the U.S. Heartland” NBC . . . “Minnesota nice” and a young Korean American cancer survivor

”Spa Hookups, Korean Parents, And Coming Out On Screen: Q&A With Filmmaker Andrew Ahn” NPR . . . the writer/director of DOL (FIRST BIRTHDAY) and SPA NIGHT

"MC Jin's Second Chance" Buzzfeed . . . remember the Chinese American battle rapper from 106 & Park?