At IntroSPECtion, we recognize that marginalised authors are under-represented in the speculative fiction genres. In this article, we compiled a list that highlights Asian and Arab-Canadian writers that have published books in the speculative fiction genre.
Andrea Mapili (she/her) & Byron Abalos (he/him)
Andrea Mapili is a playwright, movement director, choreographer, dancer, and somatic practitioner based in Toronto. In 2017, she choreographed a production of Cassettes 100, a one hundred–person interarts piece at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts. Andrea is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and a Tamalpa Practitioner who offers private coaching and group workshops specializing in embodied public speaking, somatic awareness, connected communication, and creativity for health and wellness. She is a graduate of the Tamalpa Institute and holds a B.Sc. in Biology from the University of Western Ontario. Byron Abalos is a Filipino-Canadian playwright, actor, and producer from Toronto. His
play, Remember Lolo, won the NOW Magazine Audience Choice Award at the 2005
SummerWorks Festival. In 2011, fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre premiered his
play Brown Balls at the Factory Studio Theatre. As part of the 6th Man Collective, Byron
co-created Monday Nights, an interactive basketball performance, which has toured
across Canada. NOW Magazine named him one of Toronto’s Top 10 Theatre Artists for
2010. Byron has a BFA in Theatre Acting from Ryerson University and was an
inaugural Bob Curry Fellow at Second City. Through the Bamboo
While mourning the loss of her lola, twelve-year-old Philly is literally pulled into an action-packed adventure when she opens an old book and finds herself tossed into the fantastical land of Uwi.
In Uwi, memories are stories, and all stories are forbidden since the datu’s storytelling-loving wife died and his youngest daughter Nale disappeared. Now his remaining daughters, the Sisters, rule with darkness in their hearts. So when Philly appears, the duwende believe that she is Nale and the key to saving Uwi. Can Philly save them all while searching for her lola to bring her back home?
Similar to The Wizard of Oz, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Alice in Wonderland, this unique Filipinx-Canadian tale, inspired by Philippine mythology, shows the value of keeping memories alive and explores how families deal with loss.
Fonda Lee (she/her)
Fonda Lee is the author of the Green Bone Saga, consisting of Jade City, Jade War, and Jade Legacy. She is a winner of the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, a four-time winner of the Aurora Award, and a finalist for the Nebula Award and Hugo Award. The Green Bone Saga has been translated into a dozen languages and named one of TIME Magazine’s Top 100 Fantasy Books of All Time. Lee is also the author of the acclaimed science fiction novels Zeroboxer, Exo, and Cross Fire. A former corporate strategist and black belt martial artist, she hails from Calgary, Alberta and currently resides in Portland, Oregon. Her next book, Untethered Sky, a fantasy novella, releases in April 2023. You can find her online at www.fondalee.com
Jade City
Jade is the lifeblood of the island of Kekon. It has been mined, traded, stolen, and killed
for — and for centuries, honourable Green Bone warriors like the Kaul family have used it
to enhance their magical abilities and defend the island from foreign invasion.
Now, the war is over and a new generation of Kauls vies for control of Kekon’s bustling
capital city. They care about nothing but protecting their own, cornering the jade market,
and defending the districts under their protection. Ancient tradition has little place in this
rapidly changing nation.
When a powerful new drug emerges that lets anyone — even foreigners — wield jade,
the simmering tension between the Kauls and the rival Ayt family erupts into open
violence. The outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones — and
of Kekon itself.
Ho Ka Kei/ Jeff Ho (he/him)
Ho Ka Kei / Jeff Ho is a Toronto-based theatre artist, originally from Hong Kong. His works include Iphigenia and the Furies (On Taurian Land), Antigone:方, and trace. He has held residencies with the Stratford Festival, Tarragon, Nightswimming, Cahoots, the Banff Playwrights Lab, and Factory Theatre. Jeff has received a Toronto Theatre Critics' Award for Best New Canadian Play, the Jon Kaplan Legacy Fund Award for Young Canadian Playwright, and has been the recipient of a Harold Award. He has been nominated four times for the Dora Mavor Moore Award. He is a graduate of the National Theatre School.
From the author of trace comes two adaptations that transport mythological stories from Ancient Greece to modern-day civilizations. Led by people of colour, these darkly comedic plays depict recognizable plights for justice.
Iphigenia and the Furies (On Taurian Land) highlights the repetition of hate and colonialism that occur in ancient myths through a mischievous lens. Since Iphigenia was rescued from the sacrificial altar, she has served as a high priestess to the goddess Artemis on Tauros, where she in turn is to sacrifice any foreigners who try to enter. When she discovers that an exiled prisoner is her brother, they plot their escape together, but are soon confronted by a force beyond their control.
Antigone: 方 is set against the backdrop of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement and Tiananmen Square Massacre protests. When citizens challenge a state’s traditional doctrine, the ruling family is divided between their own interests and those of its citizens. After brothers Neikes and Teo kill each other in the protests, their sister, Antigone, defies her father’s orders to retrieve Neikes’s body, causing the government—and what’s left of their family—to reach a reckoning.
Janie Chang (she/her)
JANIE CHANG was born in Taiwan and has lived in the Philippines, Iran, Thailand, New Zealand, and Canada. Her fiction is often drawn from family history and ancestral stories. She has a degree in computer science and is a graduate of the Writer’s Studio Program at Simon Fraser University. Her novels include Three Souls, Dragon Springs Road and The Library of Legends.
The Library of Legends China, 1937. When Japanese bombs begin falling on the city of Nanking, nineteen-year-old Hu Lian and her classmates at Minghua University are ordered to flee. Lian and a convoy of students, faculty, and staff must walk 1,000 miles to the safety of China’s western provinces, a journey marred by the constant threat of aerial attack. And it is not just the refugees who are at risk; Lian and her classmates have been entrusted with a priceless treasure: a 500-year-old collection of myths and folklore known as the Library of Legends.
The students’ common duty to safeguard the Library of Legends creates unexpected bonds. Lian becomes friends and forms a cautious romance with the handsome and wealthy Liu Shaoming. But after one classmate is arrested and another one is murdered, Lian realizes she must escape before a family secret puts her in danger too. Accompanied by Shao and his enigmatic maidservant, Sparrow, Lian makes her way to Shanghai in the hopes of reuniting with her mother.
During the journey, Lian learns of the connection between her two companions and a tale from the Library of Legends, “The Willow Star and the Prince.” This revelation comes with profound consequences, for as the ancient books travel across China, they awaken immortals and guardian spirits who embark on an exodus of their own, one that will change the country’s fate forever.
Kim Fu (she/her)
Kim Fu (she/her) is the author of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (Tin House), named a Best Book of 2022 by NPR and TIME, and also shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Book Award. Her previous novels include: For Today I Am a Boy–which won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice–and The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, which was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the OLA Evergreen Award. Fu’s writing has appeared in Granta, the Atlantic, The New York Times, Hazlitt, and the TLS. She lives in Seattle.
In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; and an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death, technological consequence, guilt, and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us.
Mesmerizing, electric, and wholly original, Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century blurs the boundaries of the real and fantastic, offering intricate and surprising insights into human nature.
M. T. Khan
M.T. Khan is a speculative fiction author with a penchant for all things myth, science, and philosophy. She focuses on stories that combine all three, dreaming of evocative worlds and dark possibilities. When she's not writing, M.T. Khan has her nose deep in physics textbooks or glued to her CAD computer as she majors in Mechanical Engineering. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, she currently resides in Toronto, Canada, with a hyperactive cat and an ever-increasing selection of tea. Her forthcoming debut, NURA AND THE IMMORTAL PALACE, hits shelves on July 5th 2022 from Little, Brown.
In Nura and the Immortal Palace Nura longs to wear a beautiful red dupatta or to bite into a sweet gulab. But with her mom hard at work in a run-down sweatshop and three younger siblings to feed, Nura must spend her days earning money by mica mining. But it’s not just the extra rupees Nura is after. Local rumour says there’s buried treasure in the mine, and Nura knows that finding it could change the course of her family’s life forever.
Her plan backfires when the mines collapse and four kids, including her best friend, Faisal, are claimed dead. Nura shovels her way through the dirt hoping to find him. Instead, she finds herself at the entrance to a strange world of purple skies and pink seas—a portal to the opulent realm of jinn, inhabited by the trickster creatures from her mother’s cautionary tales. Yet they aren’t nearly as treacherous as her mother made them out to be, because Nura is invited to a luxury jinn hotel, where she’s given everything she could ever imagine.
But there’s a dark truth lurking beneath all that glitter and gold, and when Nura crosses the owner’s son and is banished to the working quarters, she realizes she isn’t the only human who’s ended up in the hotel’s clutches. Faisal and the other missing children are there too, and if Nura can’t find a way to help them all escape, they’ll be bound to work for the hotel forever.
Nafiza Azad (she/her)
Nafiza Azad is a self-identified island girl. She has hurricanes in her blood and dreams of a time she can exist solely on mangoes and pineapple. Born in Lautoka, Fiji, she currently resides in British Columbia, Canada, where she reads too many books, watches too many K-dramas, and writes stories about girls taking over the world. Nafiza is the co-editor of the young adult anthology Writing in Color and author of The Candle and the Flame–nominated for the William C. Morris Award–as well as The Wild Ones, and Road of the Lost. Learn more at NafizaAzad.com.
In Road of the Lost Croi is a brownie, glamoured to be invisible to humans. Her life in the Wilde Forest is ordinary and her magic is weak—until the day that her guardian gives Croi a book about magick from the Otherworld, the world of the Higher Fae. Croi wakes the next morning with something pulling at her core, summoning her to the Otherworld. It’s a spell she cannot control or break.
Forced to leave her home, Croi begins a journey full of surprises…and dangers. For Croi is not a brownie at all, but another creature entirely, enchanted to forget her true heritage. As Croi ventures beyond the forest, her brownie glamour begins to shift and change. Who is she really? Who is summoning her? And what do they want? Croi will need every ounce of her newfound magic and her courage as she travels a treacherous path to find her true self and the place in the Otherworld where she belongs.
Rati Mehrorta (she/her)
Rati Mehrotra is an Indo-Canadian SFF writer. She is the author of the Asiana duology: Markswoman and Mahimata. Night of the Raven, Dawn of the Dove is her first YA Fantasy novel. Her stories have been shortlisted for The Sunburst Award, nominated for The Aurora Award, and appeared in multiple venues including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed Magazine, and Uncanny Magazine. In Markswoman Kyra is the youngest Markswoman in the Order of Kali, one of a handful of sisterhoods of highly trained elite warriors. Armed with blades whose metal is imbued with magic and guided by a strict code of conduct, the Orders are sworn to keep the peace and protect the people of Asiana. Kyra has pledged to do so—yet she secretly harbours a fierce desire to avenge her murdered family. But to be a Markswoman means disconnecting from one’s past completely.
When her beloved mentor dies under mysterious circumstances, and Tamsyn, the powerful and dangerous Mistress of Mental Arts, assumes control of the Order, Kyra is forced on the run. She is certain that Tamsyn committed murder in a twisted bid for power, but she has no proof.
Kyra escapes through one of the strange Transport Hubs that are the remnants of Asiana’s long-lost past and finds herself in the unforgiving wilderness of a desert that is home to the Order of Khur, the only Order composed of men. Among them is Rustan, a disillusioned Marksman whose skill with a blade is unmatched. He understands the desperation of Kyra’s quest to prove Tamsyn’s guilt, and as the two grow closer, training daily on the windswept dunes of Khur, both begin to question their commitment to their Orders. But what they don’t yet realize is that the line between justice and vengeance is razor thin . . . as thin as the blade of a knife.
Sarena and Sasha Nanua (she/her)
Sarena Nanua & Sasha Nanua are twin sisters living in Ontario, Canada. Born on Diwali ten minutes apart from each other, they grew up loving stories about twins and magic, and they began writing books together when they were nine years old. They are graduates of the English and professional writing programs at the University of Toronto and are also the authors of The Pendant Trilogy. You can visit them online at www.sarenasashabooks.com.
Daughters of the Dawn
Twin princesses Ria and Rani journey deep into dangerous new lands to save their home in this propulsive, immersive sequel to Sisters of the Snake, perfect for fans of We Hunt the Flame and The Wrath & the Dawn.
The powerful Bloodstone is in dangerous hands. And a deadly new threat rises.
Ria and Rani have barely settled into their new lives at the palace—as princesses, as sisters—when a sinister prophecy uproots them once more.
The Blood Moon will rise in one month’s time, and with it their enemy Amara’s opportunity to destroy everything Ria and Rani hold dear.
The twin princesses must find Amara—a deadly search that separates Ria and Rani once more and takes them to wintry kingdoms and scorching deserts, pitting them against ancient mysteries and trap-ridden labyrinths, lethal sea monsters, and an elusive enemy that steals into their very dreams.
Xiran Jay Zhao (they/them)
Xiran Jay Zhao is the #1 New-York-Times-bestselling author of the Iron Widow series and Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor. Their books have been a finalist or winner of many awards, including the Nebula, BFSA, and Locus awards. A first-gen Hui Chinese immigrant from small-town China to Vancouver, Canada, they were raised by the Internet and made the inexplicable decision to leave their biochem degree to write books and make educational content instead. You can find them on Twitter for memes, Instagram for fancy outfits, TikTok for fun short videos, and YouTube for long videos about Chinese history and culture.
Iron Widow
The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall of China. It doesn't matter that the girls die from the mental strain of it.
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But when she gets her vengeance, it becomes clear that she is an Iron Widow, a rare kind of female pilot who can sacrifice males to power up Chrysalises instead.
To tame her frightening yet valuable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest male pilot in Huaxia, yet feared and ostracized for killing his father and brothers. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will take over instead, then leverage their combined strength to force her society to stop failing its women and girls. Or die trying.
For more listicles spotlighting Canadian writers in Speculative fiction, check out our “Canucks in Space” series!