Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho is an author, mother, and community champion. Born in Taiwan, Wiley immigrated to Canada with her family when she was 9 years old. Identifying as Generation 1.5, Wiley’s writing explores the liminal spaces between countries, languages, cultures, and identities. Her short stories and essays have been published in PRISM international, Ricepaper magazine, River Teeth, Room and several anthologies. Wiley was a finalist for the 2021 Jim Wong-Chu Award for Emerging Writers. She is a member of the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop, North Shore Writers’ Association, and Federation of BC Writers. The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street is her first book.
Your first book, The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street: A Memoir, was recently released on April 1. What inspired you to write about your childhood?
This book was born from deep silence. While many people enjoy telling stories from when they were young, I’ve always had extreme difficulty sharing my childhood. My astronaut family’s habitual silence made it impossible for me to describe my liminal existence between cultures, languages, identities, and expectations. A sense of shame, rage, and confusion grew out of having parents who worked so hard, would do anything for me except stay with me. Writing this memoir became a reclamation project – a way to make sense of what happened and to reclaim my childhood and my family through narrative.
Astronaut Children explores the intricacies of a transnational family while coming of age. How did your experiences growing up shape how you would parent?
I always swore I’d never be like my parents, so I decried their methods, traditions and values wholesale for a long time. But after I became a mother, I recognized how much we all need to understand where we’ve come from in order to show the next generation the richness, the injustices, and the complexities of our full inheritances. I now want to embrace all of it – the tragedies and the absurdities – with compassion for the past, and clarity for the future.
When, where, and how often do you write?
I write weekday mornings at my adjustable desk, after a mug of coffee, which I set down repeatedly on a coaster that reads “Courage is one step ahead of fear.”
LiterASIAN 2026 