With each orbit of the sun, things lost are found and rediscovered. You’ve been reaching out towards feeling, through coffee dates and nights on the dance floor, on train rides and in chants for solidarity as one voice amongst many. sinθ #33 “ENCOUNTER 遇” catalogs interactions with the world around us, exploring passions and possibilities.
This issue features a selection from the shortlist of our sixth annual writing contest. Find the winners alongside other shortlisted works in sinθ #32.
In the issue:
- Staff Contributor Chi S. Tsu talks to playwright Brandon Zang about his play Three Wise Monkeys and its themes of identity, loss, and marginalization.
- In another profile, Chi meets with London-based grime, drill and alt-pop artist Princess Xixi to discuss her artistic influences, relationship with identity, and debut EP a dolls house.
- Finally, Chi converses with novelist Weike Wang about Wang’s relationship with writing, work and identity, and the process behind Wang’s latest novel.
- Editor-in-Chief Jiaqi Kang chats with Mike Fu about the cultural history behind his debut novel, his academic background, and his current interests and inspirations.
- Senior Editor Yue Chen and writer Muriel Leung discuss Leung’s new novel How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster, along with Asian American hybrid writing and meaning-making amid catastrophe.
- Our first game feature is Kwan Ann Tan’s “The Vending Machine of Infinite Possibility”, which unfolds a fictional universe with endless playable options.
- Lisabelle Tay‘s poetry steers us through the animal violence and timeless mercy of the body, whilst Alice Liang takes inspiration from Eileen Chang in her poem “Autobiographical Writings of Chinese Women.”
- Art from Angie Kang portrays an elusive and intimate affair among the moonlit trees and shows us how the mind drifts to whimsy and deep reflection.
- From the 2024 writing contest fiction shortlist, Ruby Wang explores the tension between making something real versus something people want to see in “The Film;” in “It Hangs in the Air,” Qiaoying Chen highlights tensions that play out in family dynamics through both dialogue and things left unsaid.
- From the 2024 writing contest poetry shortlist, Ava Chen charts eruption within a domestic space across her hybrid poem “Floor Plan of Newly Abandoned Bedroom.”
Front cover by Jiaqi Kang.