Yaya Yao was born and raised in Toronto’s Parkdale and Little Portugal neighbourhoods with a lot of languages around her: Cantonese, Mandarin Hokkien, Shanghainese and French and English. Yaya’s poems have been published in several journals, including TOK7, Contemporary Verse 2, and the Toronto Review of Books. Her short play, Tongued, received staged readings through playwrights’ units with Nightwood and fu-GEN Theatre companies, and she is co-author, with Helen Anderson, of the Educator’s Equity Companion Guide.
