— about céline chuang (莊善寧)

Céline Chuang (she/her) is an interdisciplinary writer, designer, educator and facilitator whose work engages memory and lineage, theory and theology, diaspora, and de/anti-colonial spaciality. Her nonfiction has appeared in places like GUTS, The Funambulist, and The Waking (Ruminate). She has written for broadsheets for The Blackwood Gallery (“what the river reveals: remembering like the water”) and Or Gallery (forthcoming), and been featured in three anthologies: Currents (Ricepaper Magazine), Unsettling the Word: Biblical Experiments in Decolonization (Commonword/Orbis), and A Liturgy for All Bodies (forthcoming, Cyclical Publishing, ed Kimmothy Cole). She is fascinated by the unearthing—or perhaps re-earthing—of hidden tellings and knowledges, the narratives crawling round the hem of history or banished from the centre of power.

In her design work, Céline seeks to craft visual and verbal vocabularies that communicate content with accessibility, ease, and pleasure. Her graphic design tends towards the vibrant, illustrative, and expressive, with a specialty in print and layout. She has collaboratively designed, planned, and facilitated programs, events, and workshops in service of contemplative healing justice, anti-oppression, anti-racism, intercultural communication, and LGBTQIA2S+ inclusion. Céline is also a community arts & creative writing facilitator who has hosted drop-in workshops emphasizing voice, lived experience, and truth-telling. She works to integrate embodied ritual and mindfulness into her planning, design, and facilitation practice to nurture spaces—and cultures of—transformation and tenderness.

In her art-making and illustration work, Céline explores notions of the sacred, visionary, and regenerative, especially through plants and food. She has worked as an associate with anti-racism consultancy company Co: Culture Collective and nonprofit Flavours of Hope and currently sits on the Board for Geez Magazine. Along with Maria Mulder and Trixie Ling, she hosts Resetting The Table, a podcast that broadcasts BIPOC brilliance and seeks expansive conversation and liberatory faith praxis. She has performed poetry in churches, bars, cafes, and seminaries, and occasionally blogs in the same vein (prophetic, anarchist, liturgical) at holyspit.blog.

Raised by the river in Mohkinstsis, Treaty 7 territory (Calgary, Canada) to hyphenated Hakka-Hokkien immigrant parents, Céline has ancestral & familial connections to Hong Kong, Mauritius, and Meixian and Fujian, China. After nearly a decade on the unceded land of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil- Waututh) in so-called Vancouver, she now lives in amiskwaciwâskahikan / ᐊᒥᐢᑲᐧᒋᐋᐧᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Edmonton).

If you are interested in working with Céline or booking Céline for an event, you can contact her here. (Note: Céline is currently on sabbatical and response time may be slow.)