Corinna Chong was born in Calgary. Her first novel, Belinda’s Rings, is based upon her M.A. thesis (2010) from the Department of English at the University of New Brunswick. Chong now lives in Kelowna, B.C. and teaches English and Fine Arts at Okanagan College. Chong is also an editor and graphic designer. Her short story “Kids in Kindergarten” published in The Whole Animal won the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize.
Fiction
Bad Land
Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Regina is a socially awkward loner who is content to live a life withdrawn from everyone except her cherished pet bunny. But after seven years of silence, Regina’s brother, Ricky, shows up unannounced on her doorstep, along with his daughter, Jez – a peculiar six-year-old with an unnerving vicious streak – upending Regina’s quiet life.
It’s clear to Regina that something terrible has happened, though the truth won’t come to the surface easily. After all, Regina and Ricky lived a childhood fraught with secrets buried as deep as the fossils in the desolate landscape around them. But this secret is one that cannot stay buried for long, and its exposure sets off a calamitous journey through the plains and mountains of Alberta’s badlands to the coast of BC, forcing Regina to confront the brutality of family love and to question how far she is willing to go to preserve it.
By turns thrilling and heartwarming, rife with gothic tension, and carried by fervent compassion, Bad Land is a story about the toxic nature of guilt, the fragility of memory, and the ways we shape our own versions of the truth in order to survive.
Fiction
Belinda’s Rings: A Novel
Edmonton: NeWest, 2013.
PS8605 .H654 B44 2013
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Half-Chinese, half-English teenager Grace (but she’d prefer it if you called her “Gray” instead) is not a perfect little supermom-in-the-making like her older sister Jessica, and would rather become a marine biologist than a mother—although she does understand how to take care of her special-needs kid brother Squid better than anyone else in her family. When her mother Belinda abruptly runs out on her family and flies across the Atlantic in order to study crop circles in the English countryside, Grace is left alone to puzzle out her life, the world, and her unique place within it.
Fiction (Short stories)
The Whole Animal: Stories
Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023.
e-book (Access restricted to members of the university community)
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Half-Chinese, half-English teenager Grace (but she’d prefer it if you called her “Gray” instead) is not a perfect little supermom-in-the-making like her older sister Jessica, and would rather become a marine biologist than a mother—although she does understand how to take care of her special-needs kid brother Squid better than anyone else in her family. When her mother Belinda abruptly runs out on her family and flies across the Atlantic in order to study crop circles in the English countryside, Grace is left alone to puzzle out her life, the world, and her unique place within it.
Anthology (Short story)
AlliterAsian
Chong, Corinna. “Porcelain Legs.” In AlliterAsian: Twenty Years of Ricepaper Magazine, edited by Julia Lin, Allan Cho, and Jim Wong-Chu. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2015, 203-218.
First published in Ricepaper 18, no. 4 (2013)