Grace Kwan is a Malaysian-born writer and sociologist living in Vancouver on unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Kwan’s undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto is in sociology and professional writing and communication. Kwan earned an MA in sociology from Simon Fraser University. Grace Kwan’s thesis is entitled Questing forward from experience : ” Asian diasporic intellectual labour & identity formation.
Fiction (Short stories)
Prelude & Other Stories
Toronto: Life Rattle Press, 2020.
Synopsis
This collection of short stories transports the reader to the sizzling heat of Kuala Lumpur’s streets, to crimson sunsets at Vancouver’s bayside, and to the drizzly shores at Bible camp. The narrator, a young Chinese-Malaysian-Canadian girl, grapples with a simultaneously claustrophobic and distant relationship with her mother as she navigates her own teenage obstinacy, queer identity in the face of religion, and the universal pursuit of fitting in.
Poetry
Sacred Heart Motel
Montreal: Metonymy Press, 2024.
forthcoming October
Publisher’s Synopsis
The Sacred Heart Motel is a map for lapses in time, for the air between the dust. Poems in a multiverse narrative bring the reader on a tour of the motel, from amenities to rooms to back alleys, through the generations of ghosts and queer love stories, until they are left alone with the heart at the centre of the narrative. Music forms the rungs of this manuscript, from nighttime quiet to an orchestral intermission to a crescendo of exposed interiors. New poet Grace Kwan is ruthless and nimble, guiding us through the recesses of body and roadside space.