Writer Lio Min has devoted their life to writing about music, magic, and sadness at the locus of queer youth culture and metamorphic Asia America. Their culture reporting and fiction have appeared in The FADER, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Broccoli Magazine, and other outlets. Their monthly Catapult column "Formation Jukebox" explores music and identity via singular songs.
Min’s debut YA novel, Beating Heart Baby, which the Los Angeles Times called "alive with ache, grief, hunger, love, pain and awe," follows two boys as they reckon with internet friendships, first love, family, fandom, and "the violence and ecstasy of what it means to become an artist" (Chicago Review of Books). It was named a best YA book of 2022 by Publishers Weekly, BookPage, BuzzFeed, and the Chicago Public Library.
Min spent their time at MacDowell working on their second YA novel, which follows a group of Chinese American girls going through a Dantean journey toward the cold heart of unresolved grief within the framework of a video game. They also worked on a short story, In the Morning, I Hear Singing..., out in spring 2023 in Exposition Review: Vol. VIII.
Portrait by Bao Ngo
