LEMON CHICKEN ASSOCIATION /
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The New Gallery and I <3 YYC Chinatown are thrilled to present a collaborative publication by the Lemon Chicken Association. This publication is the result of a project that brought together six multigenerational Calgary-based writers (Ben HF Tsui, Calvin D. Jim, Helen Hu, Steph Wong Ken, Teresa Tam, and Yi Yang) to build a community of practice over several months in 2019. This group of writers experienced various aspects of Calgary Chinatown, meeting community members, sharing meals and stories, and reflecting on their own relationships to this community. Their time together resulted in each writer developing one new work in response to their experiences. The publication features each text in English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese, and was designed in-house!
Design by Nivedita Iyer
Translation by Henry Heng Lu
Contributions from Brittany Nickerson, Su Ying Strang & Christina Dongqi Yao
The New Gallery and I <3 YYC Chinatown would like to thank the Calgary Foundation for their support of this collaborative publication project.
The New Gallery and I <3 YYC Chinatown are thrilled to present a collaborative publication by the Lemon Chicken Association. This publication is the result of a project that brought together six multigenerational Calgary-based writers (Ben HF Tsui, Calvin D. Jim, Helen Hu, Steph Wong Ken, Teresa Tam, and Yi Yang) to build a community of practice over several months in 2019. This group of writers experienced various aspects of Calgary Chinatown, meeting community members, sharing meals and stories, and reflecting on their own relationships to this community. Their time together resulted in each writer developing one new work in response to their experiences. The publication features each text in English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese, and was designed in-house!
Design by Nivedita Iyer
Translation by Henry Heng Lu
Contributions from Brittany Nickerson, Su Ying Strang & Christina Dongqi Yao
The New Gallery and I <3 YYC Chinatown would like to thank the Calgary Foundation for their support of this collaborative publication project.
Calling themselves the Lemon Chicken Association, here are the six contributing writers:
Born as a proud British subject in regal Hong Kong during the sixties, Ben HF Tsui and his family immigrated to the Canadian Prairies at an early age. He grew up as a lifelong fixture around Calgary by participating in and witnessing Chinatown’s encompassing evolution since the mid-1970s. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theatre designs from the University of Calgary, and an arts certificate from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in writing and producing for television. Ben has been accredited on many productions in the local, national and international entertainment industry. Since the late 1990s to present, he has continued to serve as an educator and AV support technician for our city’s tech college community.
A Prix-Aurora Award nominated author of the short story “Rose’s Armand” and co-editor of Shanghai Steam, Calvin D. Jim is a Calgary lawyer-turned-author whose Asian-inspired stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and publications. A self-proclaimed geek, he managed to wrangle his wife and two sons into board games and Karate (not necessarily in that order, and not without injury). His latest stories can be found in the anthologies Where the Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Enigma Front: Onward and the upcoming Blue Rose Stories Anthology.
Helen Hu is an arts writer, originally from Toronto and now based in Calgary. She studied Art History at Queen’s University. Her research focuses on the transfer of Palladianism throughout North America, as well as exploring the individual characteristics of Chinatowns throughout the world. She has a passion for making art accessible to the public by drawing real life connections to architectural spaces through the written and spoken word.
Raised in Florida, Steph Wong Ken is a writer currently based in Calgary (Mohkínstsis). Her writing has appeared in Catapult, Joyland, Pithead Chapel, Moss, and other publications. She is the recipient of the 2016 Cosmonauts Avenue Fiction Prize, as well as the 2019 Ninth Letter Literary Fiction Prize. Find more of her work at stephwongken.com.
Teresa Tam is a practicing artist based in Calgary, graduating from ACAD in 2014. Teresa’s practice utilizes familiar spaces and experiences and alter them into something foreign through re-interpreting and re-creating. Her projects are developed to include and emphasize visitor interactions. She specializes in digital platforms, functional installations and body-based exchanges. She recently exhibited with Stride Gallery and M:ST Performative Art.
Yi Yang immigrated with her family to Canada at 4 years old from Guangdong, China. She can speak, at varying levels, Cantonese, Mandarin, Kaipingnese, and English. Presently, she works as a Canadian immigration consultant; where she and her team works to prepare and guide newcomers in their process of immigrating to Canada. She hopes to be able to improve the well-being of the migration experience through her professional and personal work.