Madeleine Thien never showed her writing to anyone before she entered the MFA writing program at UBC.

Now she's the only B.C.-born author ever shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Madeleine Thien's third novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Knopf) has also won the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize-an unprecedented feat for a B.C.-born author.

Madeleine thien first heard of ricepaper, Canada's first Asian Canadian publication, when she was working for Press Gang Publishers, a feminist collective, in the late 1990s.
Ricepaper's founder, Jim Wong-Chu, hired her in 1999, during the magazine's fifth year of operation. He now recalls her as a very quiet, soft-spoken young woman with inquisitive and intelligent eyes.

"She was very passionate and enthusiastic about wanting to work for us,"; he says.

Ricepaper had started as a newsletter for members of the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop (ACWW) to connect to writers from other parts of Canada. "This was the best way to do that before the Internet,"; he says. "Up to that time we were lucky to even have a few journalism grads come through.";

It was a serendipitous match. Wong-Chu soon discovered she had a keen eye and innate talent for running a magazine but Thien needed mentorship. "I remember going to meet Jim,"; she says, "and being amazed at all the knowledge at his fingertips, all the stories and memories he had.";

Having supervised a revolving door of editors, Wong-Chu considers Thien's short tenure as editor as the most influential in the evolution of the publication. "Those three issues of Ricepaper with Maddie [Volumes 5.1 to 5.3] were the high point of our magazine in terms of an articulate, distinct editorial and literary quality. Flipping through those early copies, I recognize the fingerprints of Maddie's intellectual curiosity in the types of articles she selected.";

Under Thien, Ricepaper began exploring the diversity of writers and artists who refused or could not be defined by cultural labels, marking a turning point in the tone and influence of the magazine.

"I wanted to learn, I wanted experience, and I was still asking myself many questions about race, identity, politics, and art,"; she says. "I was in my twenties, living away from home for the first time, working almost 30 hours a week in addition to studying, and I had very little contact with my family.";
Thien profiled international artists like Shuibo Wang by examining his Oscar-nominated documentary, Sunrise over Tiananmen Square. Wong-Chu now believes her editorial themes were a precursor to her future writing, leading to Do Not Say We Have Nothing.

Another issue she edited featured Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesia's leading novelist who had been imprisoned 16 years without a trial. He was interviewed during a stopover in Vancouver, resulting in 'The Mute's Soliloquy: Pramoedya Ananta Toer and the literature of survival.'

"I was so hungry for everything, all the ideas that were coming towards me at full speed,"; says Thien, "My own sense of identity was changing."; And so her overriding concern for justice and her opposition to intolerance were kindled by her editorial mindset.

If there was a turning point, it might have been when the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop launched its Emerging Writers Award. The first year the jury selected Rita Wong's manuscript, Monkeypuzzle. In 2001, the jury unanimously selected Thien's first fiction collection, Simple Recipes.

This award attracted interest from publishers, resulting in a bidding war won by McClelland & Stewart. Still a prestigious imprint at that time, M&S agreed to publish Simple Recipes, as well as her first novel, Certainty.

Simple Recipes won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the City of Vancouver Book Book Award and the VanCity Book Prize for best book pertaining to women's issues. This triple success resulted in her receiving the Canadian Authors Association Air Canada award for most promising writer under age 30.

Certainty won the 2006 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award and it was nominated for the 2007 Kiriyama Fiction Prize.
And the rest is herstory.

Madeleine Thien was rejected the first time she applied to UBC's Creative Writing MFA program, but she was neither upset nor angry.

"Maybe doors would open and maybe they wouldn't,"; she recalls, "but there were so many things that I needed to understand through writing, and those needs and desires weren't going to go away.

"I am no longer convinced that a writing program or an MFA program is the way forward. A good reader is necessary, a library, and one's own stubbornness, humility, and courage with the work.";

Madeleine Thien completed her Masters degree in 2001 and relocated to Quebec City in 2005 after her Dutch-born husband, Willem Atsa, took a job there.

Allan Cho is a librarian at UBC and festival administrator at LiterASIAN Festival, Canada's first Pacific Rim Asian Canadian writers festival.

BCBW 2017