SUQI KAREN
SIMS
Stories, Essays, and Guy Fieri fan fiction.
Published in AGNI, Water~Stone Review, Pinch, The Greensboro Review, McSweeneyβs Internet Tendency, and elsewhere.
List of publications.
Publications by genre.
ABOUTSuqi Karen Sims was born and raised in Taichung, Taiwan. She was a finalist for the Fractured Literary Elsewhere Prize and The Pinch Literary Awards, and her story βNiwawaβ won the CALYX Journal Margarita Donnelly Prize in Prose Writing. Her fabulist, food-obsessed writing in available in AGNI, McSweeneyβs Internet Tendency, Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. Read more.
Excerpts
HUMOR / FLASH
Escaping Flavortown with Guy Fieri
βYou 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. Theyβre fresh out of the fryer and hot, hot, hot! How did you get here? You donβt know. You remember nothing. You just know youβre burning to death in an oversized appetizer of crispy, crispy rings. It does smell good, thoughβperhaps a hint of lemon.β
SHORT STORY
Agnes Scott College Writersβ Festival Magazine, p.36
Raohe Night Market
Steven R. Guthrie Memorial Fiction Prize
βRaohe Night Market in Taipei is famous for two thingsΘ‘ 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.β
CRITICAL ESSAY
Madame Bovary: What is food if you canβt consume it?
βMadame Bovary is a food novel: food echoes across the narrative, and Flaubert uses food to highlight the characters bourgeois angst. However, Flaubertβs use of food is almost antithetical to the way food is used in contemporary literature and writing.β
CREATIVE NONFICTION
McSweeneyβs Internet Tendency
βAn Open Letter to Green Gingerβ
βDear Green Ginger,
Hello! I just moved to the neighborhood. From Google Maps, I see that youβre an Asian Fusion restaurant, but Iβm not sure if that means your menu is a mix of dishes from Thailand, China, and Japan. But it doesnβt really matter.β
EDUCATIONSims is a graduate of Davidson College and completed her Masterβs 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:
βEscaping Flavortown with Guy Fieriβ Weekly Humorist
βNiwawa (Clay Baby)β CALYX Journal
βRaohe Night Marketβ ASC Writersβ Festival Magazine
ββThe story might be ancient, but this retelling puts a new spin on the Chinese folktale βThe Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.β 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.β
Tara Campbell β’ Author & Judge of the Fractured Literary 2024 Elsewhere Prize, about βThe Ox and the Magpiesβ (Third Place)
ββGod is a little girl with mud on her handsβ 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.β
Kellie Wells β’ Author & Judge of the 10th Annual Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing, about βNiwawa (Clay Baby)β
