Larissa Lai
St. John's NL 47° 33' 41.29" N, 52° 42' 45.42" W Academia/Research Literature Person
Published books
| Title | Extended title | Year of Publication |
|---|---|---|
| When Fox is a Thousand | 1995 | |
| Salt Fish Girl | 2002 | |
| Future Asians | Future Asians-Migrant Speculations, Repressed History & Cyborg Hope | Fall 2004 |
Larissa Lai is a Canadian writer, critic, and professor.
Born in La Jolla, California, she grew up in St. John's, Newfoundland. She attended the University of British Columbia and, in 1990, graduated with a B.A. in Sociology. Subsequently, she earned her MA from the University of East Anglia, and her PhD from the University of Calgary (2006). She is currently an Assistant Professor in Canadian Literature in the English Department at the University of British Columbia. She is an active committee member of the reading series Play Chthonics at UBC's Green College. She also edited poetry for the journal Canadian Literature from 2007 to 2010.
Her first novel, When Fox is a Thousand (1995) (Press Gang) was shortlisted for the 1996 Books in Canada First Novel Award. When Fox Is a Thousand was republished by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2004, slightly revised, and with a new Afterword. Her second novel, Salt Fish Girl (Thomas Allen), was published in 2002, and shortlisted for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, the Sunburst Award and the City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell Award.
From 1997 to 1998 she was the Writer-in-Residence at the Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Writers Program at the University of Calgary, and she held a similar position as Writer-in-Residence at Simon Fraser University in 2006. She was awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at UBC in 2006-2007.
Lai has twice been an instructor at Clarion West science fiction and fantasy writer's workshop (in 2004 and 2007). She was also an instructor at the original Clarion workshop at UCSD in 2009.
She has published articles and criticism in such journals as West Coast Line, Canadian Literature, The Capilano Review, English Studies in Canada and Fuse Magazine, as well as several anthologies including Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography and Bringing it Home: Women Talk About Feminism in Their Lives.