Tickets On Sale @ 9am on June 4, 2026
If you were at R.F. Kuang’s sold-out 2025 Wordfest appearance, you know why we’re so chuffed she’s coming back to Calgary with her new novel, Tapei Story. Given how many of you were disappointed that you didn’t get tickets last time, we’re delighted to be able to present her in a bigger venue, the glorious Bella Concert Hall, in an exclusive conversation hosted by Calgary graphic memoirist Teresa Wong.
Your ticket includes a pre-signed, deluxe limited-edition copy of Tapei Story. Additional signed copies, as well as Kuang’s fantastic backlist (Yellowface, Babel, Katabasis), will be available at the show and for pre-order, courtesy of Owl’s Nest Books.
Teresa Wong
Lively Conversation
Post-Show Signing
Pre-Submitted Audience Questions
Cash bar with non-alcoholic options
75 minutes. No intermission
Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Sinophone literature, and Asian American literature.
College freshman Lily Chen is off to spend the summer in Taipei at an intensive language program like so many Chinese American students before her, hoping to connect with the culture she inherited but never fully understood. But a promising start quickly unravels. Her classes are grueling, her roommate is driving her insane, and a reckless trip to the hot springs with a guy she barely knows soon has her classmates viciously gossiping. She feels adrift, a foreigner in a country she thought would feel like home.
Then shocking news arrives: Lily’s grandfather has passed away. The loss forces her to grapple with now-unanswerable questions about her family history. As Lily grieves, she’s drawn into a journey of self-discovery—piecing together memories, stories, and silences over a series of hilarious and devastating attempts at connection.
Taipei Story asks: What if the diaspora fantasy of homecoming never comes true? What if learning a language can’t bring you any closer to the people you’re trying to reach? What if you search for your family’s history, but your family doesn’t want to share? What if you wait too long to ask the right questions? As Lily struggles for answers, her summer becomes a poignant search for understanding—of herself, her family, and the meaning of home.
Teresa Wong
Lively Conversation
Post-Show Signing
Pre-Submitted Audience Questions
Cash bar with non-alcoholic options
75 minutes. No intermission
Teresa Wong is the author of the graphic memoirs All Our Ordinary Stories and Dear Scarlet, which was a finalist for The City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize and longlisted for CBC Canada Reads. Her comics have appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and The Walrus. A teacher of memoir and comics at Gotham Writers Workshop, Wong was the 2021–22 Canadian Writer-in-Residence at the University of Calgary.
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
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