Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li is a queer and neurodivergent 1.5 generation Chinese-Canadian immigrant writer, director, musician, and interdisciplinary artist living with invisible disabilities. She explores mental health, Chinese Philosophy, and liminal identity in her slipstream and fantasy writing. Her passion is creation and co-creation between artists, collaborators, and communities. She was the winner in the short story category of the Creative Writing Collective (CWC) Sustaining Shared Futures Writing Award, where she received Honourable Mentions in poetry. She was also Longlisted for the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize, Longlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize, a Finalist for The Kenyon Review Short Nonfiction Contest, Shortlisted for the Peter Hinchcliffe Award, Shortlisted for the Federation of BC Writers Literary Contests – Flash Fiction, as well as Shortlisted for the Vancouver City Poems Contest. The author of Someday I Promise, I'll Love You (845 Press), she is also a Kickstart Disability Art & Culture Artist Collaborator. She is a Banff Centre alumnus in poetry, a June Dodge Poetry Fellowship recipient, and a former PRISM international Prose Editor. She was a Jessamy Stursberg Youth Poetry Prize Juror for the League of Canadian Poets. Her fiction and poetry has been published in The Massachusetts Review, League of Canadian Poets Anthology: The Humber Literary Review, In the Storm/Struggle, The New Quarterly, QWERTY, The Fiddlehead, CV2, filling Station, and Uncanny, among others. 

Her directorial debut short musical dramedy film, In Silence, We Sing, about ancestor ghosts visiting across borders, screened at the 26th Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and Bali International Short Film Festival. Her second film, The Garden, Echoes, an award-winning video poem about grief and loneliness echoing across diaspora generations, was a nominee for the Vancouver City Poems Contest, and screened at festivals including Whistler Film Festival, Word Vancouver, Poetry Film Festival, and Bloomsday Film Festival. She is also a 2024 ScreenCraft TV Pilot Script Competition Semifinalist and Southern California Screenplay Competition Quarterfinalist for Everlost, a silkpunk TV hour-long show about two young women battling against sinister powers to regain their throne. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing at The University of British Columbia, and can be reached on Instagram/ Blueky @vivianlicreates. She will be looking for a home for her debut experimental adult novel.