Meet Our New Intern: Stephanie Chang

Hi all! My name is Stephanie Chang, and I’m absolutely thrilled to be joining the Sundress team as the Social Media Intern. I’m a Chinese-Taiwanese Canadian writer, editor, and student from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where I was born and raised. My poetry appears in The Kenyon Review, Peach Mag, Adroit Journal, Waxwing, Penn Review, and Asian American Writers Workshop, among others. More recently, I’ve been trying my hand at writing long-form fiction—I’m working on a young-adult fantasy horror novel that is very sapphic and inspired by East Asian mythology! I also published a short story in The Rumpus, which is my first prose publication credit. My writing tends to focus on girlhood and the primal yearning that comes with it. I have two chapbooks out in the world: SAINTLESS (Sunset Press, 2022) is an exploration of religion, feminine rot, and familial decay through images of toxic flora and fauna while Night Market in Technicolor (Ghost City Press 2020) reimagines myth and memory through coming-of-age stories. A new interest of mine that I hope to pursue is publishing work in undergraduate academic art history journals; I’m not completely sure if I want to go to grad school yet, but I’ve been working on a paper about Jennie Jieun Lee’s Queen Bee and Asian American ceramic art.

As many children do, I began writing stories at a young age, fueled by the fantasy worlds and thrilling adventures I read about. I only arrived at poetry during high school, though, after discovering the works of poets like Ocean Vuong, Kaveh Akbar, Mary Oliver, Cameron Awkward-Rich, Sally Wen Mao, and countless other writers of color who defied and re-defined poetry outside of predominantly white literary traditions. Writing is an act of liberation for me; it is making my own space within language and proudly taking up that space. I wouldn’t say that I write for escapism; far from it, I find joy being in community with other writers of color who are constantly seeking to challenge the confines of storytelling in the West.

I study Art History and English with an emphasis in Creative Writing at Kenyon College, where I work as a Curatorial Associate at the Gund Gallery. Although I don’t dream of labor, working at an art museum or gallery has since become my goal; I’m excited by the intersections of contemporary art, provenance, visual storytelling, and innovative curatorship. This was immensely influential in my decision to establish The OROTONE Journal, a literary journal of ekphrastic poetry. On campus, I’m involved with Sunset Press, an undergraduate chapbook press that has since become a sort of literary family for me, whose people I am forever indebted to for showing me what writing in community looks like. I also serve as an Editorial Associate for The Kenyon Review, which mostly consists of sifting through the slush pile and reading submissions. In my spare time, I enjoy listening to Mitski (who I’ve now seen twice in concert), drinking iced dirty chai lattes, reading cultural criticism essays, playing video games (I love Final Fantasy VII), thrifting, and learning about UX/UI design. I have two cats, both of whom are sisters and adopted and I love them very much. This past summer, I realized I was interested in transitioning from editorial roles to opportunities within social media and marketing, which is what led me to Sundress!

Stephanie Chang (she/they) is a Chinese-Taiwanese Canadian writer, editor, and multi-disciplinary artist from Vancouver, British Columbia. Her writing appears in The Rumpus, Adroit Journal, Kenyon Review, Frontier Poetry, Waxwing, Penn Review, and wildness, among others. She is the winner of the 2021 Adroit Prize for Poetry, judged by Carl Phillips. Her poem, “Lotus Flower Kingdom,” received a Special Mention in the 2022 Pushcart Prize anthology. Currently, she studies Art History and English at Kenyon College, where she received the $15,000 S. Georgia Nugent Award in Creative Writing.