Yen-Rong is a writer, essayist, arts critic, knitter, potter, musician, and scientist. She is currently based in Meanjin (Brisbane), on unceded Jaggera and Turrbal land.

She is the winner of the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer in 2022, and in 2020, she won the Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award. She has received fellowships from the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre and the Wheeler Centre. She has also been shortlisted for the Deborah Cass Prize and the Deakin University Non-Fiction Prize. She regularly contributes art criticism to The Saturday Paper, and has written for Meanjin, Griffith Review, The Guardian, SBS, Archer Magazine, and more.

She was the founding editor of Pencilled In, (currently on hiatus), a magazine dedicated to showcasing work by young Asian Australian artists. She has previously been a Queensland Writers Centre Ambassador, and has also been involved with many literary communities around the world, including Rambutan Literary, Umbel & Panicle, @Read_Women, and Hot Chicks with Big Brains.

Her first book, Me, Her, Us, a collection of essays that explores the intricacies of navigating sex and relationships as a young Chinese-presenting woman in a Western society, is forthcoming with UQP. She is also working on a number of other projects, including a novel, a play, and a new work of non-fiction focusing on father-daughter relationships.

She completed an Honours degree studying English Literature at The University of Queensland in 2016. She completed a Bachelor of Science/Arts, majoring in Biomedical Science (specialising in genetics) and English Literature in 2015.

She is particularly interested in South-East Asian women’s writing, Asian Australian fiction, and postcolonial Gothic literature. She hopes to pursue these interests further in an academic context at a later date.

Photo credit: Declan Roache