news | Tuesday May 12, 2026

Asian Heritage Month 2026

May is Asian Heritage Month! To celebrate the occasion, Talon has put together a reading list of some cool, unique titles that belong in your library. Dive into the craft and creativity of a diverse roster of authors of Asian heritage working in poetry, drama, comedy, and nonfiction. These Talonbooks authors are tackling subjects like desire, class, the climate crisis, grief, justice, community, isolation, lineage, language, and much, much more. Here are some recent and forthcoming titles we’d love to shout out:

1. wet by Leanne Dunic

Winner of the 2025 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize wet is a collection of poetry and photography that follows a Chinese American model in Singapore as she thirsts for labour justice, climate action, and liveable environments for humans and animals alike. In images and language shot through with empathy and desire, wet unravels complexities of social stratification, sexual privation, and environmental catastrophe. The 2025 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize jury notes that “wet moves with the clarity and patience of water itself, layering observations of place with intimate reckonings of identity.” Pick up your own copy here.

2. The Tao of the World by Jovanni Sy

After isolating during a global pandemic, Singapore’s wealthy elite make up for lost time, bedding other people’s partners and swindling one another out of dynastic fortunes. Inspired by William Congreve’s The Way of the World and Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, The Tao of the World is a Restoration comedy for modern times, a hilarious, bawdy romp that asks what it means for things to return to normal. The Tao of the World is having its world premiere at the Stratford Festival this summer (get your tickets here). Pre-order your own copy of Sy’s forthcoming play here.

3. Revolutions by Hajer Mirwali

Check out the Trillium Book Award for Poetry–finalist Revolutions! In this debut collection, Mirwali looks at shame and pleasure, asking how young Arab women – who live in homes and communities where actions are surveilled and categorized as 3aib or not 3aib, shameful or acceptable – make and unmake their identities. In conversation with artist Mona Hatoum’s kinetic sculpture + and –, Revolutions is a work of art not to be missed. Get your copy here.

4. The Book of Z by Rahat Kurd

Have you read Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize–finalist The Book of Z yet? In Rahat Kurd’s latest collection, she writes in the imagined voice of Zulaykha, “the wife of Aziz” in the Qur’an and the Biblical “wife of Potiphar.” Here, Zulaykha considers her Abrahamic lineage from its estranged and fragmented reality, asking what consolation human desire and divine longing might offer our shared present tense. Order your copy here.

5. Speaking Through the Night: Diary of a Lockdown March–April 2020 by Wajdi Mouawad and translated by Linda Gaboriau

Work of nonfiction Speaking Through the Night showcases Mouawad’s unparalleled ability to turn a phrase. While isolating in the early days of the pandemic, Mouawad embarks upon a spectacular inner voyage, travelling from his own microcosm to the eye of the Big Bang. We follow him from Peter Handke’s office to his father’s retirement home, from the banks of the Saint Lawrence to Montréal, Greece, Greenland, and the Lebanon of his childhood. Pick up your copy here.

6. Music at the Heart of Thinking by Fred Wah

Check out Music at the Heart of Thinking by recipient of the 2025 Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence Fred Wah! Music at the Heart of Thinking is a poetry that works through language as the true practice of thought and improvisation as the tool that listens to and notates thinking. In this collection that Knife Fork Books says boasts “marvels every page”, Fred Wah’s poetic mastery is on full display. Snag a copy of your own here.

7. cop city swagger by Mercedes Eng

Check out cop city swagger, the latest poetry collection by author and activist Mercedes Eng. A finalist for the 2026 City of Vancouver Book Award, cop city swagger conducts a threat assessment of Vancouver’s police. Holding close lived and living connections to the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown neighbourhoods, Eng juxtaposes the police’s and the city’s institutional rhetoric with their acts of violence against marginalized people, presenting a panoramic media montage of structural harm and community care. Order your copy here.

8. A Child’s Seance by Weyman Chan

Finally, forthcoming this fall is A Child’s Seance by poet Weyman Chan! A Child’s Seance begins with a Ouija board game played by a brother and sister as they attempt to make contact with their dead mother. Out of their shared grief explodes a big bang of questions about the universe’s smeared complexity. Pre-order your copy here.

Happy Asian Heritage Month! We hope it’s a month of art, joy, and connection.