SHORT STORY FESTIVAL 2022We were honoured to deliver the festival with partner organizations, Afros in tha City and Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society!
The theme was The Many Ways of Knowing. The following five stories were chosen and shared aloud by the authors.
YOUR LIMIT DOESN’T EXIST by Emily Yu
Emily (she/her) is a second-generation Chinese Canadian born to Hong Kong immigrants. She writes and dreams on Moh’kinstis Treaty 7 territory, also known as Calgary, Alberta. She is a contributing author to a bestselling book anthology titled Landed: Transformative Stories of Canadian Immigrant Women. Her work has been published in Ricepaper magazine and her short story, The In-Between, was selected for the Humainologie Short Story Festival in 2021. Follow her on Twitter @emilyyu_writes.
I AM LOVE by Stella-Charles Fisher
Stella (she/her) is a 16-year-old Ottawa-based artist who experiments with mixed media, animation, drawing, painting, and performance art. Her work has been displayed internationally at the Electronic Literature Organization exhibition in Porto, Portugal, and in Montreal, Within Tensions Art Magazine, and Bloom Blog Creative Prompt Competition Winner (a multimedia online publication featuring creative work related to mental health from youth around Canada). She has recently finished working with the City of Ottawa Diversity in the Arts Fund and the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity on a project called “Together In Time”, celebrating queer history and identity.
CULTURED by Carole Yue
Carole (she/her) is a first-generation child of Hong Kong immigrants living on Treaty 7 territory. She is a teacher, podcaster, dancer, hot water enthusiast. She was raised to love the written word; later, counseled to abandon it, and now, finally, has made her way back. She hopes to share her popo’s story with the world one day. Follow her on Instagram @ofmillenial.
CANARY by Diane Din Ebongue
Diane (she/her) is a Cameroonian-born and French-raised interdisciplinary artist and arts manager. She holds a Master’s degree in Sciences, Arts and Techniques of Image and Sound from Aix-Marseille University and a Master’s degree in Technologies for Education and Training from Rennes 2 university. Her first short film “A Chaque jour suffit sa peine” was selected at the Aubagne International Film Festival in 2013. Diane moved to Australia in 2019 and spent two years working for Indigenous art centres in the Northern Territory. She is part of the 2022 cohort of the Immigrant Arts Mentorship Program run by the Immigrant Council for Arts Innovation.
SATURDAY by Shaoli Choudhury
Shaoli (she/her) lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. She works for a non-profit and, in her time away from work, is passionate about South Asian media of all kinds. She writes stories that she wished she could have read growing up as the child of Bengali immigrants. Short stories are her bread and butter for now, but she hopes to venture into any and all forms of storytelling.
SHORT STORY FESTIVAL 2021From December 1-3, 2021, Humainologie hosted its first ever Short Story Festival.
The theme was Lost and Found. The following five stories were chosen and shared aloud by the authors.
DRIVING BLIND by Amelie Laura Francis
Amelie (she/her) is a freelance writer living in Port Perry. Her personal essays and articles have appeared in national magazines and newspapers. She writes frequently about race and racial issues.
COCOON by Lisa Shen
Lisa (she/her) is a chronically disabled, pansexual, Chinese-Canadian writer in Hamilton, Ontario. She loves examining the world through the lens of spoken word poetry, especially through the creation of imaginative worlds or scenarios. Her work focuses on women’s rights and abusive relationships, though she is quick to explore any topic that captures her fascination. Lisa was the first place winner of the 2021 Second Annual Mississauga Poetry Slam, as well as Britta Badour’s Open Drawer Poetry Contest in May 2020. Her work has also been featured at multiple poetry festivals, including the Voices of Today Festival and Hamilton Take Back The Night.
THE IN-BETWEEN by Emily Yu
Emily (she/her) is a second generation Chinese-Canadian born to Hong Kong immigrants. Originally from Edmonton, Alberta, she now lives in Calgary with her partner and two feline children. She works as a health-care professional most of the time, an aspiring author some of the time, and a dreamer all of the time. While her longer works are normally contemporary fantasy, many of her short stories focus on identity, often including queer or culture themes.
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU MISS A SMELL by Sambriddhi Nepal
Sambriddhi (she/her) is a Nepali settler living on unceded Coast Salish Territories in Vancouver, BC. She is a fundraiser and communications professional by day and writes non-fiction and children’s books when everyone in her household has gone to bed. In her writing, Sambriddhi reflects on the particular pains and unique joys of being an immigrant and a parent. Her writing practice is an exercise in dreaming, allowing herself to create worlds and experience thrills that she denied herself for too long. She hopes her readers feel freedom and sensory indulgence in her works.
SORE LOSER by Rachel Evangeline Chiong
Rachel (she/her) is a multi-field author and performer. On paper, she is a music and culture journalist for publications such as Exclaim! and A.side. She has won the Norma Epstein Foundation Award (‘18) in poetry and published her short story as the national winner of the Young Writers of Canada Manuscript Contest (‘14). Her first comic book, “Dark Magic”, illustrated by Sven Comics, was published in 2019. As a spoken word performer, she gigs with her partner in the duo Konstangeline and has facilitated workshops with the Toronto Public Library and The Kapisanan. She is a member of the Pluma Collective, a group of Filipinx-Canadian writers in Toronto whose work spans genres and generations. Most recently, she hosts the writing podcast “Rough Draft with Sarim & Rachel”, where she and her co-host, Sarim, disagree on just about everything.
