Sherwin Tjia is a Montreal-based poet, painter and illustrator who works as a medical illustrator for McGill University. He was born in Toronto to Chinese Canadian parents. His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies.
Poetry
Gentle Fictions
Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2001.
PS8589 .J52 G4 2001
Publisher’s Synopsis
Gentle Fictions represents Tjia’s exploration of both the essence and limits of poetry. Here, the traditional and innovative meet to form a riptide. These poems utilize a variety of forms and conceits toward expressing a world view that is tender and turbulent.
Poetry
The World is a Heartbreaker
Toronto: Coach House Books, 2005.
PS8589 .J52 W67 2005
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Ma misses the sun, warmth and colors of their faraway homeland, but her daughter sees magic in everything — the clouds in the winter sky, the “firework” display when she throws an armful of snow into the air, making snow angels, tasting snowflakes. And in the end, her joy is contagious. Home is where family is, after all.
The World Is a Heartbreaker inaugurates a new subgenre: imposter poetry. This collection is a set of 1600 pseudohaikus, bite-sized chunks of poetic goodness shotgunned at the distracted masses.
What’s a pseudohaiku? It’s the poetry of pure indulgence, a three-liner without the constraint, the pretension or the 5–7–5 syllable form. The subject matter? Relationships, cats, insecurities – themes recur and build into a kind of non-linear narrative.
Awards and Honours
2005 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry — Quebec Writers’ Federation (Nominated)
Fiction (Graphic novel)
The Hipless Boy
Released under the pseudonym Sully.
Montreal: Conundrum Press, 2009.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Ma misses the sun, warmth and colors of their faraway homeland, but her daughter sees magic in everything — the clouds in the winter sky, the “firework” display when she throws an armful of snow into the air, making snow angels, tasting snowflakes. And in the end, her joy is contagious. Home is where family is, after all.
Say for a second you’re just a normal person. You live in a hipster neighbourhood but you’re not a hipster. You’re hipless. This the premise behind this collection of interlinked stories done in a graphic novel format that originally found life as a weekly column in the McGill Daily. The protagonist here tries to live his life like an open heart, and a curious cat, meeting and mingling with a collection of Montreal oddballs. He finds love, loses love, learns to like cross-dressing, and finds something else. Along for the ride are his best friends Minerva and Owen. She is a semi-bisexual private-school dropout, he is an art-school fabulist who constantly conjures up new ways to court controversy. Crisp linework resonating with clean writing, the short stories collected here reveal an inter-woven community of new adults, struggling to find families of their own making.
Awards and Honours
2009 Expozine Alternative Press Awards – English comic (Finalist)
2010 Ignatz Awards (Finalist in 4 categories: Outstanding Artist, Outstanding Anthology or Collection, Outstanding Story, Promising New Talent)
2010 Doug Wright Awards – Best Emerging Talent (Finalist)
Fiction (Graphic novel)
Pedigree Girls
Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2001.
PN6734 .P42 T54 2001eb (Ebook; access restricted to members of the TMU community)
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Ma misses the sun, warmth and colors of their faraway homeland, but her daughter sees magic in everything — the clouds in the winter sky, the “firework” display when she throws an armful of snow into the air, making snow angels, tasting snowflakes. And in the end, her joy is contagious. Home is where family is, after all.
Privileged since birth and smugly self-satisfied, the Pedigree Girls are the stars of a comic strip written and illustrated by multi-talented Montréal artist Sherwin Tjia. These strips are highly addictive, darkly funny and desperately subversive. Revelling in adolescent dysfunction and sociopathology — from snobbery and sex to fashion and cannibalism — the strips plunge the reader into the daily atrocities that make up the lives of two wicked private school girls.
Fiction (Graphic novel)
Pedigree Girls
London: Saqi Books, 2005.
PN6734 .P42 T54 2005
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Ma misses the sun, warmth and colors of their faraway homeland, but her daughter sees magic in everything — the clouds in the winter sky, the “firework” display when she throws an armful of snow into the air, making snow angels, tasting snowflakes. And in the end, her joy is contagious. Home is where family is, after all.
The Pedigree Girls would sell their own parents for a diamond necklace, had they not already killed them for the life insurance.
With Prada handbags where their hearts should be, the musings of these teenage trust-funders – on everything from incest to fashion to cannibalism – do not merely cut close to the bone, but positively hack it to pieces.
You won’t know whether to laugh, cry or call the police.
Fiction (Graphic novel)
Plummet
Written and illustrated by Sherwin Tjia
Montreal: Conundrum Press, 2019.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Ma misses the sun, warmth and colors of their faraway homeland, but her daughter sees magic in everything — the clouds in the winter sky, the “firework” display when she throws an armful of snow into the air, making snow angels, tasting snowflakes. And in the end, her joy is contagious. Home is where family is, after all.
When Amelia “Mel” Eichenwald wakes up one morning, she finds herself in endless freefall towards an Earth that is no longer there, surrounded by the junk of human existence. From high heels to houses, billions of random items drop alongside her like fallout from an exploded mall.
Plummet follows Mel as she attempts to survive, find allies, and negotiating the balance between becoming prey or predator. What makes us human — and what keeps us human —when gravity is all there is? How do you take a stand when there is literally no place to sit? Plummet will propel readers into a new dimension that’s part fable, part post-apocalyptic nightmare.
Fiction (Graphic novel for a mature audience)
Serial Villain
Written and illustrated by Sherwin Tjia
Montreal: Conundrum Press, 2012.
PS8589 .J52 S47 2012
Publisher’s Synopsis
In this parodic collection of illustrated short stories, … Tjia concocts B-movie noir narratives filled with serial killers, mob bosses, cops and kidnappers encountering betrayal, femme fatales, and more plot twists than a Moebius strip.
The first book in the Cinder Block Books series, Serial Villain recalls the dark and stylish film posters of the 50s as well as reviving the brick-like Illustrated Classics books of the 70s and 80s.
Fiction (Graphic novel)(Pick-a-plot series ; 1)
You Are a Cat!
Written and illustrated by Sherwin Tjia
Montreal: Conundrum Press, 2011.
Publisher’s Synopsis (Adapted from its website)
Inspired by the [plot-your-own stories] gamebook fad of the late 80s — You Are a Cat! is both a parody and homage, focusing on a dysfunctional family, but told through the eyes of their cat. Fully a third of the book is lavishly illustrated from the feline first-person floor perspective. The different choices you make affect people and events! Even something as seemingly trivial as whether or not to purr can result in dramatic changes.
Awards and Honours
2011 Expozine Alternative Press Awards – Best English book (Winner)
Fiction (Graphic novel)(Pick-a-plot series ; 2)
You Are a Cat in the Zombie Apocalypse!
Written and illustrated by Sherwin Tjia
Montreal: Conundrum Press, 2013.
Publisher’s Synopsis
You are Holden Catfield. You’re a cat! It’s a pretty peaceful life. But one day the man in the family you live with comes home feeling sick, passing out in the living room. When he awakes, he tries to bite everyone! Quickly you’re all out the door. The girls are getting into a car but your thoughts stray to your girlfriend several houses down the alley. What will you do?
Fiction (Graphic novel)(Pick-a-plot series ; 3)
You Are a Kitten!
Written and illustrated by Sherwin Tjia
Montreal: Conundrum Press, 2015.
Publisher’s Synopsis
You are a couple months out of your mother’s belly. You’re brand new! You don’t even have a name yet. Well you do — but it’s not very nice. The couple that own you fight all the time. So much so that to hurt the other person, one of them stuffs you in a plastic bag and flings you into the canal! As the bag begins to fill with water colder than you’ve ever experienced, a wild panic grips you!
Fiction (Graphic novel)(Pick-a-plot series ; 4)
You Are Alice in Wonderland’s Mum!
Written and illustrated by Sherwin Tjia
Montreal: Conundrum Press, 2017.
Publisher’s Synopsis
London, 1862. When your daughters Lorina and Alice go for an afternoon’s picnic in Hyde Park, Alice goes astray! You practically run your legs off looking for her, but as night falls you panic. You look for a clue, a sign — anything. And that’s when a smelly vagrant steps out from behind a tree and offers you information in exchange for coin… or a kiss. If you decide to ignore him, continue searching on page 42. But if you hear him out, turn to page 12. The choice is yours!
In a quest to find your daughter that will take you through the seedy underbelly of London’s Whitechapel district and up into the secret debauched heart of its richest denizens, You Are Alice in Wonderland’s Mum! allows you to make the choices that will bring your dear daughter home, or lose her to Wonderland forever.
Selected Criticism and Interpretation
Fraser, Michael. “Delight in the Heart.” Montreal Review of Books. Spring 2020. https://mtlreviewofbooks.ca/reviews/plummet/
Stout, John. “Rewriting and Postmodern Poetics in Canada: Neo-Haikus, Neo-Sonnets, Neo-Lullibyes, Manifestos.” In Public Poetics: Critical Issues in Canadian Poetry and Poetics, edited by Bart Vautour, Erin Wunker, Travis V. Mason, and Christl Verduyn. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015, 87-108.
PS8155.1 .P82 2015
Links
Publisher Coach House Books
Publisher Conundrum Press
Publisher Insomniac Press
Publisher Saqi Books