RoomMate Kayi Wong

Meet Kayi Wong, who has been a Room editorial collective member since 2013.

What are your favourite genres to read? I read mostly fiction, graphic novels, and CNF. Creative non-fiction is something I seek out and pick up on my own without the nudging of enthusiastic readers or reviews. I love the feeling of being hypnotized by an essayist’s or memoirist’s writing on things I have zero interest in or writing that isn’t really about anything in particular.

What are you currently reading, or have recently read, that you would recommend, and why? I finished reading Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life earlier this year, and I’d recommend it to anyone who has time to read in private, is into literary fiction, and is ready to forever live a lesser emotional life than those in a fictional story.

Do you have any favourite Asian Canadian women writers? It genuinely takes all the willpower in me to stop myself from asking Doretta Lau at every reading the most dreaded question of all writers’ time: When is your next book coming out? Her debut short story collection is something I constantly go back to—whether as my own re-reading material or as a dependable birthday gift. Lau’s stories are just so effortless in both their imagination and style. Then there’s Durga Chew-Bose, who writes these essays that satiate my craving for all things form-bending, cultural criticism, and CNF.

Which emerging writers are you excited about? beni xiao and Sarah Kabamba! Room had the honour of publishing their early works, and honestly, the CanLit world will be a dismal place until their own collections of writing materialize.