Mandy-Suzanne Wong started writing essays about mollusks to accompany her forthcoming novel, The Quiet Upwelling (Graywolf Press, 2027). She eventually decided that “the small, unassertive, and typically overlooked marine animals…deserved their own book.” In the resulting essay collection, Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl (Graywolf Press, February 2026), snails, mussels, and other sea animals “feature as protagonists in their own, inexpertly research-based, philosophical, speculative, and emotional stories,” says Wong. In fluid, sinuous prose, Wong marvels at the endurance and habits of these creatures while scrutinizing how humans imperil ocean life. Wong imagines the consciousness of these life forms and what it means to encounter one. About meeting a starfish she writes: “We inspired silent amazement in each other, a condition so all-consuming it means no more than itself, its own extravagance, irresistible stillness.”
Mandy-Suzanne Wong is the author of Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl (Graywolf Press, February 2026), a collection of essays.
“In Bermuda, where I was born and remain marooned, there are no literary magazines, book publishers, or bachelors programs in the arts; so the internet has been my best resource—often my only resource—for research and opportunities,” says Wong. “I say this to encourage those writers who are not North American or European and who may feel as if they have no idea where to begin: The internet is a capitalist tool, but [it] can also serve creative and subversive work.” Wong found one outlet engaged in such work with the print and online quarterly Talk Vomit when she responded to editor Monica Benevides’s call for monthly columns. Wong pitched a “series of encounters with other-than-human beings in person and in art,” which became the column Kiskadee. Wong highlights the collaborative dynamic she developed with Benevides, and three pieces from the series appear in Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl. Talk Vomit, which “harbors a willful longing for when the internet was still fun,” curates mostly fiction and nonfiction, along with some poetry, with an emphasis on work by writers based in Massachusetts, where the journal is edited. The editors note they particularly like gothic stories, flash satire, and essays that incorporate cultural criticism or coming-of-age narratives. Submissions are currently closed.
Wong initially wrote the title essay of her collection, which chronicles the life of a single abalone, as a preface to the second edition of her fiction chapbook, Awabi (Digging Press, 2022), which focuses on Japanese women divers. When it became too long, Wong asked Digging Press’s founder and editor in chief, Gessy Alvarez, if she could instead submit it to the publisher’s journal, Digging Press Journal, where it appeared in 2022. The online annual for “cultural omnivores” features poetry, flash fiction, and short fiction with a commitment to “nurture artistic experimentation, encourage broad-mindedness and cultural inclusion, and promote eclecticism.” A recent issue included a story about a man processing grief by Ellen J. Perry and an interview with mixed media artist Sherry Karver. Submissions are closed.
Another online journal devoted to the diverse and unexpected, but with a more punk aesthetic, is new_sinews, which accepted Wong’s hybrid essay “fragmen / lamen -tations.” The piece is written in two columns: one a timeline of the cultured pearl industry’s development, the other a series of monologues from speakers including a mussel and an oyster. The editor of new_sinews, Steve Barbaro, needed to write new code to properly render the piece’s format online. “Editors and production teams who are ready for strange textual adventures do exist,” says Wong. The journal new_sinews publishes poetry, fiction—with an emphasis on the speculative and fantasy genres—and “aggressively creative” nonfiction. Submissions in all genres are open via e-mail.
When looking to place her “fraught and rather gruesome essay, ‘Not Just Crimson,’ about the animal-advocate performance artist dave phillips,” Wong was delighted for it to be accepted by Black Warrior Review. “The [review] has a history of embracing the weird,” she says. Black Warrior Review, which is edited at the University of Alabama, publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, hybrid work, comics, and art in print twice a year and online throughout the year. The editors write, “We honor risk over perfection, messy and bold over neat and polished.” Submissions in all genres will open on June 1.
Wong also writes fiction, which she has placed in the Cincinnati Review, Litro, and the Adroit Journal, among other venues. She singles out Arcturus—the online literary magazine of the Chicago Review of Books, which published her story “The Indoor Gardener”—as supporting the development of her work. Wong notes that then editor Jen Cox-Shah helped her balance the tension in the story and “bring out the protagonist’s intense grief, bafflement, and shock in the narrator’s ostensibly emotionless tones and monotonous sentence structures.” Arcturus spotlights poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and hybrid work. The editors note they look to Chicago’s early modernist literary magazines such as the Dial, Poetry, and the Little Review for inspiration while seeking the new, with a particular interest in speculative fiction, flash fiction, experimental poetry, political essays, and narrative reportage. Submissions in all genres open on March 1.
Dana Isokawa is the editor in chief of the Margins and a contributing editor of Poets & Writers Magazine.
