Tammy Lai-Ming Ho is a Hong Kong-born poet, translator, fiction writer, scholar, and literary editor whose work spans creative and critical modes. She is editor-in-chief of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, co-founder of the peer-reviewed journal Hong Kong Studies, and serves in editorial roles with Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine and The Shanghai Literary Review. Formerly a tenured associate professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, she now holds research and fellowship appointments in Europe and Canada. Her publications include If I Do Not Reply (poetry; 2024), Too Too Too Too (poetry; 2018), Her Name Upon the Strand (stories; 2018), and Hula Hooping (poetry; 2015), and the academic monograph Neo-Victorian Cannibalism (2019). Her work has been translated into many languages and she has held international residencies and fellowships. Website: www.tammyholaiming.com | Email: [email protected]
by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho In Ted Chiang’s “Hell Is the Absence of God,” the term “restoration” appears multiple times in relation to the legs of one of the characters, Janice Reilly. The story, first published in 2001 and winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, was collected in Stories of Your Life and Others (2002).…
by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho There is a ghost in Bo Wang’s 2023 short film An Asian Ghost Story 九龍東往事.[1] “It was a strange time,” the narrator laments, “with strange things and strange people.” She is the spirit of a Japanese woman who died in northern China; after her death, her hair was cut and sold,…
by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho Maybe in the many nearby ghost towns, ghosts do roam and send old-fashioned good wishes to abstract relatives in distant homes. —from the poem “Maybe”, If I Do Not Reply (2024) * In Zhou Dedong’s short story “Have You Heard of ‘Ancient Glory’?” (Hereafter “Ancient Glory”),[1] a young couple scrapes together…
by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho For more than forty-three hours, from the afternoon of 26 November 2025 into the morning of 28 November, fire held fast to the towers of Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po, Hong Kong. Authorities later confirmed 168 deaths and 79 injuries, making it the deadliest fire in Hong Kong since 1948.…