Two well-connected Canadian literary professionals, Jen Sookfong Lee and Pia Singhal, will be joining ECW Press as acquiring editors. Singhal’s appointment is effective immediately and Lee will begin in July.

Vancouver’s Lee is an editor, author, teacher, and co-host of the podcast Can’t Lit. As a board member for Buckrider Books/Wolsak & Wynn, she served as an acquiring editor. She will step down from that position when she begins her new role with ECW.

“I’m looking for fiction or non-fiction that explores the complicated identities, intersections, and interests of our contemporary world, whether that’s a historical novel with a subversive twist, or a memoir that reveals a story we haven’t yet seen in literature, or a collection of short stories with a varied cast of characters who collide in unexpected ways,” she says. “I believe strongly in the fluidity of genre and style, and I welcome submissions from authors whose communities have been under-represented in publishing, and who enjoy writing stories that capture hybridity and multiplicity.” She adds that she is “open to all forms of prose.”

Singhal has worked as executive assistant at the literary agency Westwood Creative Artists and as manager of the Forest Hill Type Books in Toronto. “Both in fiction and non-fiction, I’m looking for material that is propulsive, sharp, sometimes funny, and centralizes the universal human experiences of BIPOC characters around relationships and self-discovery,” she says. “My focus is literary fiction, autofiction and narrative non-fiction, but I’m also keen to work with some genres – true crime, speculative historical fiction, and horror, to name a few.”

Both editors can be reached at [email protected].