Wally Suphap

Wally Suphap (he/they) is a nonfiction writer, lawyer, editor, translator, and educator. They are the author of Thirteen Ways of Interrogating an Incident (Fish Publishing, 2022), a hybrid-mode short memoir examining the intersectionality of queerness, masculinity, and power, selected as the overall winner of the Fish Short Memoir Prize. They also received named placements in the Writer’s Digest Personal Essay Contest, CRAFT Hybrid Writing Contest, and Globe Soup Short Memoir Contest. They were awarded fellowships and residencies from Anaphora Literary Arts, Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Kenyon Review, Tin House Summer Workshop, and Yale Writers’ Workshop. Their writings have appeared in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction, Columbia Journal, Fish Anthology, New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, Journal of Creative Writing Studies, The Margins, Writer’s Digest, and elsewhere. Their translation work covering Southeast Asian literature has been supported by the Center for the Art of Translation and Two Lines Press. They are the founding editor of The Plentitudes literary magazine, and formerly served on the editorial staff at Columbia Journal and Creative Nonfiction. 

Originally from Bangkok and raised in Los Angeles, they hold a BA from Columbia College, a JD from Columbia Law School, and an MFA in Nonfiction from Columbia’s School of the Arts, where they were a Lenfest Fellow and a Teaching Fellow. Prior to pursuing an MFA, they practiced corporate law as a dual qualified New York attorney and Hong Kong solicitor. At Columbia, they have taught undergraduate writing, legal writing, creative nonfiction, and journalism, along with serving as a part-time writing consultant at the University Writing Center. Currently, they are completing a cultural memoir about their family-run Thai-Chinese restaurant.