10 Years at the Helm of Ricepaper Magazine

 

This week marks a major milestone—ten years as Editor-in-Chief of Ricepaper Magazine. On Wednesday, I’ll have the honour of reflecting on a decade of storytelling, advocacy, and community-building in Asian Canadian literature.

What am I most proud of? Helping amplify voices too often left unheard. I’ve had the privilege of publishing both emerging and established Asian Canadian writers—each one reshaping the literary landscape and expanding the boundaries of what Canadian literature can be.

Back in 2016, we made the bold leap from print to digital. It wasn’t just survival—it was reinvention. That shift allowed us to embrace multimedia, reach new audiences, and publish fresh work from across the globe, including a growing wave of Southeast Asian voices who found us online and submitted their stories, often for the first time. That pivot wasn’t easy, but it gave Ricepaper a second life—and a bigger one.

As editor, I’ve helped shape some of our most potent and timely themed issues, including “Time and Space,” “Myths, Legends, and the Supernatural,” and “Re-Imagining Asian Futures”—themes that tapped into the pulse of identity, diaspora, mental health, resilience, and memory across generations. Our readers weren’t just reading—they were seeing themselves.

We are currently celebrating 30 years of Ricepaper with our latest anthology Infusions, a special collection of writing in Ricepaper Magazine that spotlights a new wave of Asian Canadian and Asian diasporic voices. Alongside that, we launched an archival project that captured the impact of the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop (ACWW), preserving its legacy for the future.

Mentorship and collaboration have always been at the heart of what I do—nurturing new editors, mentoring interns, and building bridges with universities, cultural organizations, and literary festivals like LiterASIAN and Word Vancouver. We’ve grown stronger together.

One of my proudest moments? Renaming the ACWW Emerging Writers Award after my friend and mentor Jim Wong-Chu, following his passing in 2017. It felt right—to honour his legacy while making space for the next generation of literary talent.

Ten years in, I still believe Ricepaper matters more than ever. We’re not just publishing stories—we’re continuing to shape the future of Asian Canadian writing.