F.E. Choe

F.E. Choe is a Korean-American writer whose work has been published in Clarkesworld Magazine, The Moth Magazine, and Fractured Lit. She is a 2023 graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, Viable Paradise alum, and an Editor at 100 Word Story. Born in Toronto, Canada, she currently lives in the United States.

Artist Statement

I am a short fiction writer whose work explores family, power, identity, gender, race, class, and othering via literary speculative fiction. My work centers the lives of Asian Americans, often literalizes the metaphorical, combines the weird with the specifically contemporary, the bleak and humorous, the surreal and fantastical with the real and mundane. I seek to move readers with heartfelt urgency, to evoke a sense of wonder, grace, compassion, and empathy for others and our world.

Why do I write? I write to make sense of the world and the deep-rooted questions of my heart. I write because when presented with the choice of longevity, prosperity, or status at my 100-day ceremony, I picked the life of a poet. I write to carve out a space expansive enough for me (as a Korean American, immigrant daughter, Southern fabulist, and teller of fairy tales) and members of my diaspora to exist more fully than we have so far been allowed to on the page and to render us with complexity. 

My influences and the authors I seek to be in conversation with include Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, Ted Chiang, Margaret Atwood, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, George Saunders, Angela Carter, Ken Liu, Kim Fu, Karen Russell, and Kij Johnson.