Background

Lydia Kwa was born in 1959 in Singapore.

Education

Lydia Kwa immigrated to Canada in 1980 and began studying at the University of Toronto where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology in 1983. Then she went to Queen's University and obtained a Master of Arts degree and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in clinical psychology in 1990.

Career

Lydia Kwa began writing still in her young years. While studying at Queen's University, she started to take her writing more seriously and visited a writers' group that met on the top floor of the Grad Club on Monday nights. It was a terrifying but wonderful experience. In 1989, the poems she submitted to two campus periodicals won prizes. It was the year her poems were first published in a Canadian literary magazine, CV2 out of Winnipeg and Manitoba.

She spent a couple of years after graduation working in Calgary, first at the University of Calgary Counselling Service, then at the Calgary Women's Health Collective. She moved to Vancouver in the summer of 1992. She started out working full-time as a psychologist in an organization but soon realized she needed to restructure her working life so she could create more room for her writing practice.

That was 1994 when her first book The Colours of Heroines came out. She began her private practice at that time and also worked over the years with various organizations. Since then, she has published several books: This Place Called Absence, The Walking Boy, Pulse, and Sinuous. Sinuous is a contemporary poetic text written over a period of 15 years from 1997-2011. In this book, Kwa recalls her travels as a Singaporean woman with Chinese heritage, as she migrated to live and study in Canada. It covers various experiences of living in Canada, including her reflections on the nature of trauma, the resilience of the human spirit, and the healing that comes from practices such as meditation and ki aikido.

Deciding afterward that the time was right, she began working on Oracle Bone, her new novel, a prequel to The Walking Boy that reflects her interest in Asian mythology and martial-arts movies. Kwa wanted to riff on the tradition's patriarchal origins. Chuanqi were pieces written by male literati about strange creatures like ghosts, demons, and fox spirits. These strange creatures they wrote about were almost predominantly female and wicked. Oracle Bone packs imperial intrigue and clandestine romance, magical beings and spirited showdowns, and revels in its cinematic sensibility.

A primary influence for writing this book was the 18th-century text Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio, by Qing Dynasty writer Pu Songling, as well as some movies in Hong Kong cinema - A Chinese Ghost Story, A Chinese Ghost Story 2 - and then various other films in Japanese film history to do with ghosts. These celluloid compositions also shaped how the novel tracks pursuits of power or virtue in seventh-century China.

Earlier novels, such as her 2000 debut, This Place Called Absence, employed contemporary and period backdrops to detail personal journeys amid dislocation. Using a fantastic historical setting for her chuanqi volumes freed her to create quests with further imagination. Characters are struggling with things that many can identify with such as not being loved, being abandoned, anger, revenge, hatred, fear, and lust for power. Lydia Kwa is currently working on her new book.

Achievements

• Lydia Kwa became particularly famous as the author of novels that received wide acclaim. For her books, Kwa was a nominee for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award in 2000, the ReLit Award in 2001, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction in 2002, and for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in 2006. For the book, This Place Called Absence, she was a finalist for the Books in Canada First Novel Award. In 2017 she was awarded Earle Birney Prize.

Works

More photos

• book

  • This Place Called Absence

    (Successful psychologist Wu Lan begins reading old journal...)

    2000
  • Sinuous

    (Through the mind's eye, Lydia Kwa charts the path of the ...)

    2013
  • The Walking Boy

    (The Walking Boy is a quest novel set in early eighth-cent...)

    2005
  • Pulse

    (Set in contemporary Toronto and Singapore, Pulse is the s...)

    2010
  • Oracle Bone

    (Life in seventh-century China teems with magic, fox spiri...)

    2017
  • The Colours of Heroines

    (Lydia Kwa's voice is drenched in memory. Her poetry carri...)

    1994

Views

If Lydia Kwa could travel to any place or time period, she would like to go far back to the Jomon period in Japan (around 14,000 b.c. to 300 b.c.). She is interested in the clay vessels that were produced at the time, using a rope around the clay when still wet.

Quotations: "I am interested in observing the traditions - whether literary or cultural - with the mind to subvert them through creation of alternative narratives. Yes, I am interested in outsiders, those who are marginalized, those who are queer or non-normative in other ways. I wish to imagine worlds that are outside of the familiar tropes and boxes."

"Writing has kept me sane, or at least saner than if I don't write."

Personality

Lydia Kwa is an out lesbian.

She trained in ki aikido and tàijí mostly and also in xíngyìquán, bā guà, Tibetan White Crane kungfu, and qìgōng.

She is a big fan of certain martial arts movies.

References

• Lydia Kwa's Official Website