Mandy-Suzanne Wong
Bermudian Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s acclaimed debut novel, Drafts of a Suicide Note (Regal House, 2019), was a finalist for American Book Fest’s Best Book Award for General Fiction, the Eyelands International Book Award, and the Permafrost Book Prize, as well as a Conium Review Book Prize semfinalist, a Santa Fe Writers’ Project Literary Award shortlistee, and a PEN Open Book Award nominee. She is also the author of the fiction chapbook Awabi (Digging Press, 2019), winner of the Digging Press Chapbook Series Award, and the nonfiction chapbook Artificial Wilderness, winner of the Selcouth Station Environmental Chapbook Competition (Selcouth Station Press, forthcoming). Her nonfiction manuscript Listen, we all bleed was named a finalist and awarded an honorable mention in the Red Hen Press Women’s Prose Prize Competition, and her story “Coconut Octopus” took first prize in the Eyelands International Flash Fiction Competition. In addition to her regular column at Manqué Magazine, she has published in Entropy, Waccamaw, The Spectacle, The Island Review, Quail Bell, The Deck Hand, and several other venues.
Works
Listen, we all bleed.
Animal voices, radical art.
New Rivers Press, 1 November 2021
Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s essay collection, Listen, we all bleed, published by New Rivers Press, is about radical artists from around the world whose anti-anthropocentric works use recordings of nonhuman voices to plead for an end to violence against nonhuman animals. Central to this book is the importance of listening—just listening—as a creative effort that is also an activist act. Listen, we all bleed includes reflections on the work of Kathryn Eddy, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, Robbie Judkins, mOwson&M0wson, Dave Phillips, Colleen Plumb, Quiet Ensemble, Hiroki Sasajima, Andrew Stevenson, Jana Winderen, and Eisuke Yanagisawa. Listen, we all bleed has been nominated for the PEN/Galbraith Nonfiction Award, PEN Open Book Award, and Foreword INDIES Book Award.
"In this beautifully subtle, intricately woven text, Mandy-Suzanne Wong entreats you to listen, to really listen, to the nonhuman. And even if this listening makes you feel uncomfortable, ashamed, guilty, she dares you to persist. Moving seamlessly among the works of artists devoted to nonhuman voices, she manages to relay a myriad of worlds beyond our own, each with its own infinite complexity and beauty. Reading this book, hearing and loving the nonhuman, should prompt you to be passionate about saving this world that we have so thoroughly ravaged." (Tracy McDonald, editor of ZOO STUDIES)
Animals Across Discipline, Time & Space
Artificial Wilderness
Drafts of a Suicide Note
Awabi
Awards and Recognition
- Finalist, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award, 2019 - Drafts of a Suicide Note
- Finalist (Fiction: General), American Book Fest's Best Book Award, 2019 - Drafts of a Suicide Note
- Finalist, Eyelands Book Award, 2019 - Drafts of a Suicide Note
- Winner, Selcouth Station Press Environmental Chapbook Competition, 2019 - Artificial Wilderness
- Finalist and Honorable Mention, Red Hen Press Women's Prose Prize Competition, 2019 - Listen, we all bleed
- Winner, Digging Press Chapbook Series Competition, 2018 - Awabi
- Winner, Eyelands/Strange Days Books International Flash Fiction Contest, 2018 - "Coconut Octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus)"
- Finalist, Permafrost Book Prize, 2018 - Drafts of a Suicide Note
- Honorable Mention, Leapfrog Press Fiction Contest, 2017 - Drafts of a Suicide Note
- Semifinalist, Conium Review Book Prize, 2016 - Drafts of a Suicide Note
Press and Media Mentions
- Drafts of a Suicide Note, American Book Fest 2019 Best Book Award (Fiction: General) results listing, 2019.
- Drafts of a Suicide Note, Bernews, Bermuda, 2019.
- Listen, we all bleed, Phantom Power, USA, 2019.
- Drafts of a Suicide Note, Royal Gazette, Bermuda, 2018.
- Awabi, Bernews, Bermuda, 2019.
- Listen, we all bleed, Animal Sounds, UK, 2018.
- Coconut Octopus, Bernews, Bermuda, 2018