Works by
Andy Quan
(Writer)

Amazon Shorts

• Crossings
  Many of my stories have explored coming out as a gay man but this one travels both backwards from that time - to the first awakenings of sexuality - and forwards - to a romantic encounter between two men, one Canadian and one American. I originally envisioned this story as the first of a collection of stories, all set in different cities around the world, which look at the ideas of travel, identity and community and the borders that keep people in and keep people out!

Fiction

• Six Positions (2005)
  Written with a poet's sense of language and the quirky voice of an outsider among outsiders, Six Positions takes the reader on a frank and entertaining international road trip of clubs, baths, and sex parties. Subtly exploring the roots of fantasy, insecurity, stereotypes, and attraction, Andy Quan emerges as plainly comfortable with himself, his body, and his identity as an Asian man in the notoriously objectifying gay community. This level of comfort shows in the slyly humorous ways he allows the issue to surface in these narratives, where pickups trawling for a passive geisha often get more than they bargained for. Whether narrating the course of a romantic encounter gone bad, detailing the goings-on at an orgy, or smashing the stereotype of the Asian boytoy, Six Positions offers fresh, thoughtful, and creative considerations of gay bodies and acts, while celebrating determined and unadulterated sexual desire.

• Calendar Boy (2001) -- Finalist, 2001 Lambda Literary Award for Small Press
  On the edge of adulthood, self–discovery, coming out; in university towns, Europe, Vancouver, Toronto, Sydney, the protagonists of Calendar Boy unravel cultural heritage, community, identity on the road to — they hope — love, happiness, and self–acceptance. Set around the globe, sixteen adventurous stories weave fiction with real–life smarts, guts and oomph underpinning them. Quan shifts gears effortlessly from street–smart colloquial voice to rapid–fire monologue to bemused, exhilarated tone of immigrants new to Canada or to gay male culture.
  
  With one foot in urban Canadian life and the other in the global village, Calendar Boy will hit home even as it makes you see the world in new ways.

Music

• You can hear some of Andy's songs on his MySpace music page.

  • Clean (2002)
    Singer-songwriter Andy Quan's new CD Clean features twelve new original songs in his own unique brand of "cabaret-folk". These intimate vocal and piano tracks speak of love and loss, travelling the world, and getting one step further down that road to knowing who we are. His lyrics, full of image and poetry, hint at his other vocation as a published poet and short fiction writer.

  • Take-off and Landings (1999)
    Features 10 songs.
    
    "I produced it on cassette, since at the time, doing a CD seemed a bit too expensive for me.
    
    In fact, with CD burners these days, I can burn from the master if anyone is interested in a copy - though the cover is for a tape!"

  If you're interested in Andy's music, write to him and he'll figure out a way to get some to you.

Poetry

• Bowling Pin Fire (2007)
  In his second book of poems, Andy Quan recounts a series of firsts: first time listening to Joni Mitchell’s Blue , first loss of a friend, first dance with a man. Building on earlier explorations of memory, sexuality, and culture that are the signatures of his best work, Bowling Pin Fire transcribes the arc of one man’s life from growing up Chinese in Vancouver, to seeing the world through the lens of fearless, free-spirited youth, to arriving, as we all must, at the initial cautionary glimmerings of midlife. The rituals and rivalries of grade school, the later experiments with everything new, the close-knit dynamics of family and far-flung friends, the happenstances and fidelities of love, the elation and hangover of travel to unexpected quadrants of the globe all prompt the quality of reflection necessary to the leading of a truly examined, contemporary life. Andy Quan asks of himself and of everyone: how to be fully in and of the moment? Bowling Pin Fire not with empty answers but with the good fortune of worldly insight.

• Slant 2001)
  Sharp, accessible and witty, Slant offers a fresh exploration of issues of race, sexuality, and life in the global village. The collection alternates between three main themes of childhood and family in the Chinese diaspora; gay sexuality, community and rites-of-passage; and voyages literal and metaphorical. Slant asks "how do we belong?" and answers in a voice that is compelling and unique.

Other

• Swallowing Clouds: An Anthology of Chinese-Canadian Poetry (1999), co-edited with Jim Wong-Chu
  Work by writers of Chinese-Canadian heritage have achieved international success: this includes books by Wayson Choy, SKY Lee, and Denise Chong, as well as the acclaimed anthology of Chinese-Canadian fiction, Many Mouthed Birds. Swallowing Clouds collects the work of some of the most vibrant and exciting Chinese-Canadian poets working today, being the first poetic anthology ever published in book form. The collection evokes the spirit and sentiment of the Chinese-Canadian community, representing a diversity of language and style that speak to issues of ethnicity and culture while forging new and exciting paths of their own.
  
  Swallowing Clouds includes poems by a number of well-known writers as well as fresh new poetic voices,forming an eloquent and fiery portrait of the Chinese-Canadian experience.
  
  CONTRIBUTORS: Marisa AnLin Alps, Louise Bak, Lien Chao, Ritz Chow, Glenn Deer, Sean Gunn, Jamila Ismail, Gaik Cheng Khoo, Lydia Kwa, Larissa Lai, Laiwan, Fiona Lam, Jen Lam, Evelyn Lau, Pei Hsien Lim, P.K. Leung, Andy Quan, Goh Poh Seng, Thuong Vuong-Riddick, Fred Wah, Rita Wong, Jim Wong-Chu, Kam Sein Yee, Paul Yee.