Rita Wong is the author of three books of poetry: sybil unrest (co-written with Larissa Lai, Line Books, 2008), forage (Nightwood 2007, winner of Canada Reads Poetry 2011), and monkeypuzzle (Press Gang 1998). She lives on the unceded Coast Salish territories otherwise known as Vancouver, where her work investigates the relationships between contemporary poetics, social justice, ecology, and decolonization.
Wong’s poems have appeared in anthologies such as Regreen: New Canadian Ecological Poetry; Prismatic Publics: Innovative Canadian Women’s Poetry and Poetics; The Harbrace Anthology of Poetry; Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literature; and more. Her poem “J28″ for IdleNoMore can be found in the journal Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society: http://decolonization.wordpress.com. She has received the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop Emerging Writer Award and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.
Wong teaches in Critical and Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, where she has developed a humanities course focused on water, for which she received a fellowship from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. She also serves as the President of Emily Carr University’s Faculty Association, creatively facing the question of what union renewal in contemporary post-secondary education may entail. Currently she is researching the poetics of water (http://downstream.ecuad.ca/) and working toward watershed literacy.
Find more about Rita here.