SUQI KAREN
SIMS
Short stories, CNF, critical essays, and Guy Fieri fan fiction.
Published or forthcoming in Water~Stone Review, The Pinch, The Greensboro Review, Fractured Lit, CALYX Journal, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere.
Full list of publications.
Publications by genre.
ABOUTSuqi Karen Sims was born and raised in Taichung, Taiwan. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fractured Literary, Greensboro Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Pinch, and elsewhere. Her awards includes third place in the 2024 Fractured Lit Elsewhere Prize, the CALYX Journal Margarita Donnelly Prize in Prose Writing, and others. Read more.
Excerpts
HUMOR / FLASH
Escaping Flavortown with Guy Fieri
“You wake up in a pile of giant calamari, and the hot oil stings your skin. The gargantuan halos are looped around your arms and legs, pulling you down. They’re fresh out of the fryer and hot, hot, hot! How did you get here? You don’t know. You remember nothing. You just know you’re burning to death in an oversized appetizer of crispy, crispy rings. It does smell good, though–perhaps a hint of lemon.”
SHORT STORY
Agnes Scott College Writers’ Festival Magazine, p.36
Raohe Night Market
Steven R. Guthrie Memorial Fiction Prize
“Raohe Night Market in Taipei is famous for two thingsȡ The frst is the fresh tianbula, a tilapia and cuttlefsh paste sliced into a boiling pot of vegetable oil. Uncle Tianbula shaves at a giant mass of seafood clay, the shards sizzling in his dynastic cauldron...The other thing Raohe Night Market is famous for is its fortune tellers.”
CRITICAL ESSAY
Madame Bovary: What is food if you can’t consume it?
“Madame Bovary is a food novel: food echoes across the narrative, and Flaubert uses food to highlight the characters bourgeois angst. However, Flaubert’s use of food is almost antithetical to the way food is used in contemporary literature and writing.”
CREATIVE NONFICTION
“An Open Letter to Green Ginger”
“Dear Green Ginger,
Hello! I just moved to the neighborhood. From Google Maps, I see that you’re an Asian Fusion restaurant, but I’m not sure if that means your menu is a mix of dishes from Thailand, China, and Japan. But it doesn’t really matter.”
EDUCATIONSims is a graduate of Davidson College and completed her Master’s in Journalism at New York University. She is a doctoral candidate at Georgia State University, where she teaches composition and creative writing.
HAVE YOU EATEN? : STORIESSuqi Karen Sims is compiling a collection of short stories about food, myth, and Taiwan. Below is a selection of published stories from the project:
“Escaping Flavortown with Guy Fieri” Weekly Humorist
“Niwawa (Clay Baby)” CALYX Journal
“Raohe Night Market” ASC Writers’ Festival Magazine
“‘The story might be ancient, but this retelling puts a new spin on the Chinese folktale ‘The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.’ With beautiful language, the author places the emphasis on the role of the animals in the story, sharing their thoughts as they stage-manage the humans in the narrative. Magpies might be jaded and have other things to do, but they have their reasons for helping to reunite the lovers of legend.”
Tara Campbell • Author & Judge of the Fractured Literary 2024 Elsewhere Prize, about “The Ox and the Magpies” (Third Place)
“‘God is a little girl with mud on her hands’ begins this remarkable fable about the animating force of love and longing. This short, lyrical tale moves with a fierce fluidity one section to the next and the stirring emotional sweep that can only be evoked by a perfectly executed allegory. Stunning.”
Kellie Wells • Author & Judge of the 10th Annual Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing, about “Niwawa (Clay Baby)”
