Since it's Father's Day on September 2 in Australia and New Zealand, I wrote about my late father and a teddy bear named Yadi we both loved for SBS Life. It's the second essay I wrote for the emerging Asian-Australian emerging writers series of SBS Life, and it's a piece I'm particularly proud of. Read it here. 

I recently had the opportunity to write about my "Get Out" experience with my first landlady in New Zealand for SBS Life in Australia. Many international students in New Zealand are forced to put up with exploitation and racism from their landlords just to keep a roof over their heads, and much of the bullying they experience takes place behind closed doors. Having experienced this first-hand, I felt I had to write this piece, and I'm grateful to have been given the opportunity to do so. I would like to thank Candice Chung for being a great editor to work with, as well as the team behind SBS. You can read the full article here. 

I have a new essay/short memoir in the latest volume of Aotearotica, New Zealand's journal of erotic literature and art. Writing this essay, I wanted to explore how being exiled from one's homeland makes every encounter all the more intimate and comforting. This is the very first prose piece I've ever written that's told backwards (from experience to innocence), and would love to know if the structure actually works. This is also my first publication after successfully defending my PhD dissertation in Creative Writing (yay, I'm a Doctor now!) which makes it all the more celebratory for me. 

I haven't received my copy in the mail yet, but every volume of Aotearotica that I own is beautiful, with great writing alongside outstanding artwork, and I'm sure this latest volume won't disappoint. It's available New Zealand bookshops (I'm sure VicBooks has it) as well as from their online shop.