Tom Cho's Blog

This Friday, I’ll be appearing on a panel about writing complex topics. The panel is part of the annual conference for WritersNL (an organization that supports writers in Newfoundland and Labrador). Note that the panel is only open to WritersNL members, but the organization does offer free memberships to local BIPOC writers. Here are the details, as drawn from the Facebook event:

Writing complex topics

Writing works about complex topics is a difficult craft that requires special considerations. ...

Coming up on November 21, Bitten Peach 分桃, the latest exhibition from Owen Leong, is opening at the Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture (IAC). Having seen some of the works appearing in this show, I’m so excited about it. Sydney-siders, you’re in for such a treat!

I’m excited about my own role in this show too. Years after I commissioned Owen to take the cover photo for Look Who’s Morphing, Owen commissioned me to write a fiction piece in response to the works appearing in this...

Pride is about to start in St. John’s, on the island of Ktaqmkuk, and I’ll be appearing on a panel, “Trans Writes”, this Sunday.

But first, some context: Pride festivals across the Northern hemisphere have been happening in the shadow of the genocide in Palestine. If you’re not yet familiar with No Pride in Genocide, please check them out. Among the resources on their website is a short zine that explains pinkwashing and homonationalism, and how to respond to pinkwashing (especially Israel’s pin...

On Sunday the 17th, I have my first reading in St. John’s coming up. Here are the details, as drawn from the Facebook event:

The Anti-Racism Coalition and The Quilted Collective Present

Migrant Spring: A Day of Migrant Writing and Spoken Word

When: Sunday, March 17 at 2:00

Where: MUN University Centre, The Landing (UC3015)

My thanks to The Anti-Racism Coalition of Newfoundland and Labrador, The Quilted Collective, and Sobia Shaikh for this reading opportunity.

I’ve never appeared on a bill of m...

In exciting and life-altering news, on May 15, I’ll be starting a permanent, full-time role as the Writer/Editor at Community Food Centres Canada (CFCC). CFCC is a non-profit that addresses food insecurity. Their work includes advocating for action on a root cause of food insecurity: poverty. Needless to say, I am raring to start in this role.

So what is going to happen to my freelance work? I have freelanced for the past 30 years. Even when I have worked in permanent roles, I have still taken o...

This is bit late notice I know, but I am giving an online reading this Sunday night (or Monday morning for east coast Australians)! I am grateful to the poet, translator, and LGBQT+ writers’ advocate Steve Bellin-Oka for this opportunity. This event is part of the Tulsa Glitterary Queer Reading Series, a monthly queer reading series run by Tulsa Glitterary, a US literary organisation serving LGBQT+ writers in the Tulsa region, the state of Oklahoma, and the Lower Midwest.

Here are the details, a...

Back in October 2019, I blogged about being awarded an artist residency at 100 West Corsicana, an international artist residency program in Corsicana, Texas (about an hour from Dallas). However, the residency was subsequently postponed twice, due to the pandemic. But next month, from March 4 to April 5, I will finally be doing the residency. I’m very grateful to the host organisation, Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency, for holding my program place for more than two years.

As might be expecte...

“The first songs resounded in a small town, back then a virus hotspot.”

These are the opening lines to a piece I wrote late last year—the first short story I’ve written in around a decade. This flash fiction (in this case, a fiction piece under 200 words) is among 20 pieces of commissioned creative writing that appears in a new exhibition, Wellness Deity, opening on the 21st at Linden New Art (in St Kilda, Melbourne).

Wellness Deity is a project conceived by the Melbourne-based artist artist Vip...

Coming up next Thursday April 1, I’ll be giving an online reading and Q&A with creative writing students from University of Mary Washington (in Fredericksburg, Virginia) who have been studying stories from Look Who’s Morphing.

At this event, I’ll read some work from both Look Who’s Morphing and my novel-in-progress, and I’ll also intersperse my readings with some talk about my work. This will go for about 30 minutes and be followed by a Q&A.

This event is also open to the public, so if you’re th...

I have done a few online gigs during the pandemic, most of them being class visits (hello to any of those students who might be reading this: students at Kew High School and T Cooper’s fiction-writing students at Emory University