Lei Wang has been a science journalist in Hong Kong, a private investigator in San Francisco, and a life coach in Shanghai. A graduate of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program and the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, she writes speculative prose that explores what-ifs instead of how-tos. Her essays have appeared in Ecotone, The Lifted Brow, The Reader Berlin, and the New York Times’ Modern Love column. She is currently at work on her first book of creative nonfiction, a secular myth buster on spiritual enlightenment. A rational mystic, she believes there is something fundamentally true in spiritual and religious teachings that have gotten lost in the language and dogma of them. If you’re a smart skeptic, she wants to make you otherwise. Email: leiiwaang [at] gmail.com
Website: https://lei-w.com/
by Lei Wang “In bardo again,” I text a friend, meaning I’m at the Dallas airport, en route to JFK. I can’t remember now who came up with it first, but it fits. Neither of us are even Buddhist, yet we are Buddhist-adjacent, that in-between place. Though purgatories are not just in-between places, but also…
by Lei Wang I have often been envious of how characters in stories don’t seem to need to do dishes or laundry or buy groceries, except when it serves their story, like a meet-cute at the farmer’s market or perhaps a juicy conflict between two in-laws over the most efficient way to load the dishwasher.…
by Lei Wang [This is part of a series on bringing magic to the everyday through imagination.] Someone once told me the trick to fasting: take long walks. That way, your body believes you are at least on the search for food and temporarily forgets its hunger. When you’re in the mode of actually solving…