SUSPECT: VOLUME 1, YEAR 1
SUSPECT: VOLUME 1, YEAR 1
Editors:
Editor-in-Chief: Jee Leong Koh
Essay: Jerrine Tan, Prasanthi Ram, and Alysha Chandra
Fiction: Sharmini Aphrodite
Poetry: Marylyn Tan
Interview: Jade Onn and Janelle Tan
Review: Maggie Wang and Miranda Jeyaretnam
Art: Miki Wang
Web: Emily von Borstel
With Assistant Editor, Gaudy Boy: Isabel Drake
978-1-958652-01-5
$16.00 / Paperback / 8.5" x 11" / 164 pages
February 22, 2022
N. America: Bookshop / Amazon
Distributed by Ingram
In celebration of one year of publishing vital and diverse Asian writing and art, SUSPECT: VOLUME 1, YEAR 1 brings selected works from our online journal into print.
About
Brimming with voices at once manifold yet singular, SUSPECT: VOLUME 1, YEAR 1 showcases a selection of Asian writers hailing from Canada, China, India, Israel, Malaysia, Singapore, the UK, the US, and elsewhere. The anthology, which celebrates one year of SUSPECT journal’s digital publishing, offers new perspectives from emerging literary voices. Boldly, yet always compassionately, these contributors demand of their readers an imagination expansive enough to inhabit geographical borders, subverted conventions, diverse subjectivities, and lives recorded from the margins.
Where the anthology foregrounds global perspectives—from translations of poetry documenting Kazakhstan political strife to explorations of transnational Asian American identity—it also lives in the personal, minute, and intimate experiences of daily lives. A poet embarks on a textual and photographic search for elusive memory, an epistolary ode is dispatched to the under-sung dwarf planet Pluto, and a sister writes to her lost loved one. From among such varied sources of inspiration, SUSPECT: VOLUME 1, YEAR 1 moves and delights.
Contributors
Aniruddh was a Bhojpuri poet hailing from Maker in the Saran district of Bihar. His poetry features rich yet poised depiction of rustic, idyllic rural life and calm reflection on the day-to-day activities of ordinary village-folk. He is best-known for his work ‘Panihaarin’. This poem “N āv Khule M ānjh ī Re” juxtaposes the spiritual theme of transcendence with an everyday setting and common, lay sights through the use of extended metaphor. Aniruddh was born in Dihi village, which lay on the banks of the river Gandak. His childhood was spent in an idyllic, verdant, and picturesque setting, which is reflected in the prominence of natural themes in his poetry. Rural themes both feature directly as well as retain a strong influence conveyed through motifs in his works. Aniruddh was an active participant in sociocultural circles, events, and activities. Known for being a humble and genial samaritan, he took initiative in organising grassroot literary events at the local level and furthering the intellectual and literary cause in his community.
Oral Arukenova is a poet, literary critic, and translator. She studied the German language in Almaty and business management in Hamburg. Her stories, poems, and articles have been published in literary journals in Kazakhstan, Russia, Germany, and the United States, including in Brooklyn Rail and the forthcoming anthology Amanat.
Anastasiya Belousova was born in Almaty in 1996. She has a master’s degree in specialized literary studies and is a graduate of the program for poetry, prose, and children’s literature at the Open Literature School of Almaty.
Minxi Chua (she/her) is a writer, editor, and filmmaker from Kuala Lumpur. She is currently based in Bristol, and pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at Brunel University. Her work centers on her lived experiences as a queer Chinese Malaysian woman and explores themes of madness and magic.
Shelley Fairweather-Vega is a professional translator of Russian and Uzbek in Seattle, Washington. She translates poetry, fiction, screenplays and more for authors around the world, with a special focus on the contemporary literature of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Fairweather-Vega holds degrees in International Relations and Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies. As a translator, she is most interested in the intersection of culture and politics in modern history. Her published projects and work in progress are at fairvega.com/translation.
Sigrid Marianne Gayangos was born and raised in Zamboanga City, Philippines. Her works have appeared in various venues such as Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, OMBAK Southeast Asia's Weird Fiction Journal, ANMLY, Likhaan Journal, Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction and Reckoning Magazine, among others. Her debut collection of short stories, Laut, is forthcoming from the University of the Philippines Press.
Irina Gumyrkina was born in 1987 in eastern Kazakhstan. She completed the poetry seminar at the Open Literature School of Almaty and works as a journalist and editor. Gumyrkina has published her poetry in the journals Plavuchy most, Prostor, Etazhi, Zvezda, and more, and is the author of two books of poetry.
Atar Hadari trained as an actor before studying play-writing with Derek Walcott at Boston University. His plays have won awards from the BBC, Arts Council of England, National Foundation of Jewish Culture (New York), European Association of Jewish Culture (Brussels) and the RSC, where he was Young Writer in Residence. His plays have been staged at Finborough Theatre, Wimbledon Studio Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre, Mark Taper Forum and West Yorkshire Playhouse. His sitcom script “Strictly Kosher” won an Alfred Bradley award from the BBC. His Songs from Bialik: Selected Poems of H. N. Bialik (Syracuse University Press) was a finalist for the American Literary Translators’ Association Award., His first poetry collection Rembrandt’s Bible was published by Indigo Dreams. The Pen Translates award-winning Lives of the Dead: Collected Poems of Hanoch Levin is out now from Arc Publications.
Chris Huntington is the author of the prize-winning novel Mike Tyson Slept Here. His non-fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and outlets, including National Public Radio and The New York Times. His poetry has been featured in Rattle, Solstice, Peatsmoke, Singapore Unbound, and elsewhere. More information is available at www.chrishuntingtononline.com.
The intimate works of visual and performance artist ila (she/her, Singapore) incorporate objects, moving images, and live performance. Through weaving imagined narratives into existing realities, she seeks to create alternative nodes of experience and entry points into the peripheries of the unspoken, the tacit, and the silenced. Using her body as a space of tension, negotiation, and confrontation, her works generate discussion about gender, history, and identity, in relation to pressing contemporary issues. She writes speculative fiction and is working on a collection of shorts, Pura-Pura Parade.
Diane Josefowicz is reviews editor at Necessary Fiction. Her debut novel Ready, Set, Oh was published in May, 2022, by Flexible Press.
Jiaqi Kang is the founding editor-in-chief of Sine Theta Magazine, an international, print-based publication made by and for the Sino diaspora. They are a doctoral student in art history, researching hygiene politics in postsocialist Chinese art. Their fiction has been listed on the Wigleaf Top 50 2022. Find them online: jiaqikang.carrd.co.
Pitamber Kaushik is a writer, columnist, teacher, and independent researcher. His writings, cutting across boundaries of disciplines, styles, and geopolity, have appeared in over a hundred-odd publications across thirty-five countries. He is interested in exploring philosophy, politics, linguistics, social psyche, and culture through his creative efforts, focussing on rationalism, postcolonialism, environmentalism, and social justice, among others. With his interdisciplinary, comparative, and eclectic approach to the Humanities, he considers himself a xenophile – a purveyor and philatelist of unique ideas and historico-cultural curios.
Ayesha Khan (she/her) is based out of a town in Himachal Pradesh, India. She works as an Assistant Professor of English Literature. She writes in English and Urdu, neither of which is her first language. Twitter @aayeshaa_khan
Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi (He/They) is a queer, Iranian-born, Toronto-based poet, writer and translator. Shortlisted for the 2021 Austin Clarke Poetry Prize, they are the winner of the 2021 Vallum Poetry Prize and the author of three poetry chapbooks and two translated poetry chapbooks. Their debut poetry collection Me, You, Then Snow is out with Gordon Hill Press. Their second book WJD is forthcoming in a double volume with the translation of Saeed Tavanaee’s The OceanDweller from Gordon Hill Press in Fall 2022. Their collaborative poetry manuscript with poet Klara Du Plessis is forthcoming with Palimpsest Press in Fall 2023.
Contributors (cont.)
Monica Kim is a queer writer and organizer. Born in South Korea, she now lives in Brooklyn, New York. She won the inaugural Jane Kenyon Chapbook Prize Award in 2020 and The Blue Mountain Review Asian American Chapbook Award in 2021. Her writing has been published in A Velvet Giant, Call Me [Brackets], Pollux Journal, and others, and is forthcoming in Anthropocene, Honey Literary, and SUSPECT. You can find her on Twitter at @kimmonjoo.
Daniel W.K. Lee is a third-generation refugee, queer, Cantonese American born in Kuching, Malaysia. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing at The New School, and his debut collection of poetry, Anatomy of Want, was published by QueerMojo/Rebel Satori Press. Daniel lives in New Orleans with this head-turning whippet Camden. Find out more about him at danielwklee.com
Rachel Kuanneng Lee writes poetry. Her work appears or is forthcoming at Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, wildness, carte blanche, Dialogist, ANMLY, Sweet, and elsewhere. She was a part of the inaugural cohort for the Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program and is a Brooklyn Poets Fellow. You can reach her at rachel-lee.me.
Daryl Lim Wei Jie is a poet, translator and literary critic from Singapore. His latest collection of poetry is Anything but Human (2021), which was shortlisted for the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize. His work has been featured in POETRY Magazine, Poetry Daily and The Southwest Review. His poetry won the 2015 Golden Point Award, awarded by the National Arts Council, Singapore. He edited Food Republic: A Singapore Literary Banquet (2020), the first definitive anthology of literary food writing from Singapore. He is putting together an anthology of Malaysia-Singapore writing, entitled The Second Link.
Susan L. Lin is a Taiwanese American storyteller who hails from southeast Texas and holds an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Her novella GOODBYE TO THE OCEAN was the winner of the 2022 Etchings Press novella prize. More of her work can be found online at https://susanllin.wordpress.com/.
Gabriel Awuah Mainoo is a Ghanaian writer, poet, editor, & lyricist. Winner of the 2021 Africa Haiku Prize and the LFP/RML/Library of Africa and the African Diaspora chapbook prize, he is the author of five poetry books & the forthcoming ‘‘Sea Ballet.” His writings have appeared in Wales Haiku Journal, EVENT, Prairie Fire, Best New African Poets Anthologies (2018, 2019, 2020).
Awadhendra dev Narayan was a poet and author from Gaya, Bihar, noted for his social critique through poetry. His works are marked by extraordinary intellectual reflection on common sentiments, keen observation of everyday human life, and profound insights into the dynamics of social psyche.
Ramil Niyazov-Adyldzhyan is a poet, artist, and translator. He is an alumnus of the Open Literature School of Almaty (poetry seminar by Pavel Bannikov) and an employee of the Krel Cultural Center; he graduated from the department of liberal arts and sciences of St. Petersburg State University. In 2019 he was longlisted for the Arkady Dragomoshchenko Prize. He is the editor of polutona.ru.
Chisom Charles Nnanna (he/him/his) is a Nigerian creative writer and student of mass communication in the University of Ilorin. He is the winner of the 13th edition of Tush Magazine Bi-monthly Writing Contest; the two-time winner of the Shuzia Poetry Contest; the top entrant of the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize, 2021; and the finalist of the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize, 2020.
Asel Omar is a graduate of the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow and a member of the Writers’ Union of Kazakhstan. She is the author of four books of fiction, a collection of poetry, and numerous articles. Her long short story “Black Snow of December,” about a popular political uprising in Almaty in 1986, caused great controversy at the time of its publication.
Kanat Omar graduated with a degree in film direction from the St. Petersburg State Cultural Academy in 1996. He has lived in Astana since 2001. His writing has been featured in journals and anthologies of Russian-language poetry from Kazakhstan and the international Russian-speaking world.
Rahad Abir is a writer from Bangladesh. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, The Los Angeles Review, The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Wire, Himal Southasian, Courrier International, and elsewhere. He has an MFA from Boston University. He received the 2017-18 Charles Pick Fellowship at the University of East Anglia. Currently he is working on a short story collection, which was a finalist for the 2021 Miami Book Fair Emerging Writer Fellowship.
Purbasha Roy is a writer from Jharkhand, India. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in SIAMB!, Bluestem, DASH, VIEW!, Bayou Review, long con, Hive Avenue, Delicate Friend, and elsewhere.
Dr. Shalini Sengupta earned her PhD from the University of Sussex and is a Ledbury Poetry Critic. Her research specialisms are in modern and contemporary writing; twentieth and twenty-first century women’s writing; and avant-garde poetry. Her academic and public-facing work has appeared/is forthcoming with Modernism/modernity; Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry; Contemporary Women’s Writing; Poetry Book Society; Poetry Wales, and harana poetry.
Sebastian Taylor has an undergraduate degree in physics from the University of St Andrews and is now pursuing an MLitt in curatorial practice at the Glasgow School of Art. They are fascinated by performance poetry, and they write on the themes of queering the body, self, and space, after having served as the Head Editor of the University’s Creative Writing Society.
Kevin Tsai, originally from Taiwan, received his PhD in comparative literature from Princeton University. His research interests include Roman poetry, Tang Dynasty narrative, translation studies, and contemporary film. He is Professor of Chinese at the University of South Alabama, and his best friend is really great at following “sit” and “stay” in English and German.
Avinash Chandra Vidyarthi was a Bhojpuri author and poet, born in 1928 in Shahpur, Arrah in Bihar. His works include the short story publication ‘Daga Baji Gail’, the poetry collection ‘Anasail Raag’, and the satirical essay ‘Beta ke Naihar’. Although he was a prolific writer in terms of employment of a variety of forms, he was particularly distinguished in the comical satire subgenre of Bhojpuri literature. He was also one of the editors of ‘Bhikhari Thakur Rachnavali’, a compilation of the works of the celebrated Bhojpuri folk writer, poet, and playwright Bhikhari Thakur.
Lydia Wei is a junior at Stanford University. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, DIAGRAM, wildness, The Margins: Asian American Writers’ Workshop, harana poetry, and elsewhere. She lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland. She likes blackberries and cherries and very long walks.
Jackson Minjoon Wright is an aspiring poet and musician living in the Northern California Bay Area. A Korean American adoptee raised in Kansas City, he writes about the particularities of adoption and secluded life in the Midwest. Heartily inspired by poets such as Aimee Nezhukumatathil, he hopes to take a tender look at the harmful events that come to pass and shine a celebratory light on the wonderful moments that can often feel fleeting and revelatory. In his downtime, he works at a publishing house and writes music.
Katherine E. Young is the author of the poetry collections Woman Drinking Absinthe and Day of the Border Guards and the editor of Written in Arlington. She is the translator of Look at Him (Anna Starobinets) and Farewell, Aylis (Akram Aylisli). Her translations of contemporary Russian-language poetry have won international awards; she was named a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts translation fellow. From 2016–2018 she served as the inaugural Poet Laureate for Arlington, Virginia. https://katherine-young-poet.com/