Aaron Chan
Aaron Chan is a writer and instructor born and raised on unceded Coast Salish territories in Vancouver, BC. He holds a BFA from the University of British Columbia and an MFA in creative writing from the University of California Riverside. He is the author of the memoir This City Is a Minefield and the children’s picture book The Broken Heart. His writing has been included in Plenitude, filling Station, Polychrome Ink, and Xtra, as well as being longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize. He won subTerrain’s Lush Triumphant Literary Award and was the recipient of the L.M. and Marcia McQuern Endowed Graduate Award. Chan is the 2026 Writer-In-Residence for the City of Richmond.
Writers & Books
Program History
2026 - Rising Star
Rising Stars
Selected by
Paul Seesequasis
Citation
“In his memoir, This City Is a Minefield, Aaron Chan writes with a fierce candour about navigating the layered complexities of coming out and negotiating Vancouver’s Cantonese and gay communities, from the negative views of homosexuality in the Asian community, to the hierarchal power structures in the gay community with whiteness on top. It is the honest and courage prose inherent in Chan’s writing that excites me for his future. He is giving voice to so many who fall between margins, who fit and don’t fit, and who must forge, through trial and error, their own personal path.”—2026 Rising Star Selector Paul Seesequasis