Weyman Chan

Weyman Chan was born in Calgary, Alberta in 1963, to immigrant parents from China. He has published poems and short stories in a wide variety of literary journals and anthologies. He won the 2002 National Magazine Awards silver prize for his poem “At work,” and the 2003 Alberta Book Awards for his first book of poetry, Before a Blue Sky Moon. His second book, Noise From the Laundry (Talonbooks), was nominated for the 2008 Governor General’s Award for Poetry.

A laboratory technician by trade, Chan wrote his first poem when he was thirteen years old. Distilling a unique voice and ethnic point of view in the spiraling, non-sequential and non-temporal syntax of poetry remains the most liberating form of expression he has found to engage in. “Every writer must come to terms with their own inner language—and it takes time to learn how to use it to best effect.”