photo by SM SukardiGrace Shuyi Liew is a lesbian writer & poet.
Born & raised in Malaysia, a former British colony, Grace writes of migration, sexuality, and transnational lineages. She is currently writing her first novel, Most Beautiful Things, a queer multi-generational family feud set in a fictional gambling city in Malaysia.
She has been awarded a Center for Fiction Fellowship, Tin House writer-in-residence, MacDowell Fellowship, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Fellowship from Squaw Valley Writers, Aesthetica Magazine Creative Writing Award (Finalist 2022), Associate Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, Aspen Summer Words scholarship, resident writer at Can Serrat in Barcelona, Watering Hole Fellowship, Ahsahta Press Chapbook Prize, and many others.
She has written a poetry collection, Careen (Noemi Press, 2019), named Electric Literature’s “14 Unmissable Poetry Books of 2019,” Bustle’s “26 New Poetry Collections By LGBTQIA+ Writers To Look Out For In 2019,” Entropy Magazine’s “Best Poetry Books of 2019,” Bookriot’s “Queer Poetry Collections to Read During National Poetry Month,” and more. She has been anthologized in 2019 Best of the Net.
Grace lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her girlfriend, dog, and cat. She studied philosophy and now teaches various workshops, serves The Trevor Project as a crisis counselor, and sometimes hosts a local queer collective.
FICTION + NONFICTION
Brooklyn Bridge, Lascaux Review (winner of 2023 Lascaux Prize for short fiction)
Evidence, Guernica
Sicko, Yalobusha Review (runner-up for the Barry Hannah Prize, selected by Deesha Philyaw)
Splinter, Wigleaf (nominated for the Pushcart Prize)
Make Yourself Into A House, Electric Literature (selected by Min Jin Lee, winner of the 2022 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize)
Old Bones, Kenyon Review
How Grief Works, The Offing
Halfway, Berlin, an essay, alice blue review
CRITICISMS
Chloe Garcia Roberts’ The Reveal, Kenyon Review
Kim Yideum’s Blood Sisters, Waxwing
The Holes and Cyborgs in Sun Yung Shin’s Unbearable Splendor, Waxwing
Nests and Strangers: On Asian American Women Poets, Waxwing
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Bodymap, Fanzine
Ginger Ko’s Motherlover, Fanzine
An Interview with Caroline Crew, Fanzine
POETRY
Happen, The Margins, Asian America Writers Workshop
The Use of Lyricism, Kenyon Review
Film Camera, Honey Literary
Publics, Juked
Eventually Every Color Careens into Its Own Lack, Dreginald
Martian Snatch, Wanderer
In A Simplified Language, Tell Me About The Weight Of Sounds, Banango Street
What Do You Want To Play?, TYPO
Two Poems, PANK
PRESS COVERAGE
Careening: An Interview by Vi Khi Nao, LA Review of Books
An Interview, Ploughshares Blog
Our Worries: A #MeToo Narrative, American Book Review
A Podcast Convo with Muriel Leung, Blood-jet Writing Hour
Review and Q&A: Careen, Host Publications
The Ruthless Otherworld of Grace Shuyi Liew, Anomaly Lit
How to Run Out of Our Own Flesh, a review, Asterix Journal