Kawai Shen is a Chinese-Canadian writer living in Toronto
Mixed Form (Fiction and Non-fiction)
Wavering Futures
Montreal: Metatron Press, 2026.
Forthcoming May 2026
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Wavering Futures is a shape-shifting collection of experimental and speculative fiction and nonfiction prose, fragments that hold space for doubt, intimacy, collapse, and erotic candour. Written from the edge of ecological and emotional breakdown, these short, vivid vignettes refuse easy categories or easy answers.
Across three sections—Imaginary Utopias, Imminent Collapse, and Survival Tactics—Shen explores how we relate, resist, and reimagine ourselves in moments of personal, political, and planetary crisis. Whether through moments of quiet connection, collective dreaming, or surreal violence, Wavering Futures leans into instability not as failure, but as invitation.
With a style that is lucid, polymorphous, and full of surprise, this debut offers both soft and searing accounts of living during a time of uncertainty and existential threats. Wavering Futures is a collection written for anyone who feels unmoored by the present, but unwilling to give up on what comes next.