photo by SM Sukardi

Grace Shuyi Liew (she/they) is a queer 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.

To reach her, go to Contact

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 WorksThe Offing 

Halfway, Berlin, an essay, alice blue review



CRITICISMS



Chloe Garcia Roberts’ The RevealKenyon 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 BodymapFanzine

Ginger Ko’s MotherloverFanzine

An Interview with Caroline CrewFanzine

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

In A Simplified Language, Tell Me About The Weight Of Sounds, Banango Street 

What Do You Want To Play?, TYPO 



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