jun🌀chou

last January, just weeks after i quietly declared 2024 My Year of Writing, i checked my inbox at a stoplight (bad habit, i know) and burst into happy tears — i had advanced to the second round of reviews for the Margins Fellowship, out of 100+ applicants. i likely looked like a loon, laughing and crying in my car, but the message felt like a bouquet too big for my arms — beautiful + impossible to carry without spilling petals everywhere. i didn’t get the fellowship last year but that sliver of hope and my desire for improvement turbocharged me. there were more rejections than wins but by the end of 2024 i had built a body of work i’m proud of, with words in The New York Times, Teen Vogue, Outside Magazine, Cake Zine... flash forward to 2025: i’m in the same car, shuttling down the highway after a self-imposed residency upstate, windows down, headed to the Asian American Writers’ Workshop office — this time, for my fellowship interview…! the emotional distance between those two versions of me — a year apart — is wide and wild. one was wishing. the other is arriving. writing can sometimes be a lonely place and i am deeply grateful for everyone who has made it less so — @aaww_nyc @nerdglazed for the trust, my fellow fellows @aaminasdfghjkl @booksnailmail @jessxsnow , @sunnybenchstudio for the new headshot 🤸 all this to say! — trust the process but never stop working! the journey is a spiral but preparation and timing are everything and it will all be worth it in the end 🌀

a few weeks ago we gathered in a church and spoke stories of safety, sustenance, and survival. an immaculate night, brimming with delightful moments of giggling across the pews at my friends and fulfilling a lifelong desire of appointing an audience to “please be seated” grateful to @cake_zine for the opportunity, @nisreendiary for allowing me to share her story, and all of my cherished friends who showed up to support 💒🥐 📸 @brandynliu

happy earth day i love the butterflies the blue the bloom the shrooms the songs the stone the sun the moon the leaves the light the water the way the light hits the water and most of all i love the people who make life on earth oh so worthwhile ᵕ̈

“I need your help to die,” is far from a comforting introduction from a stranger, especially when that stranger arrives in a hospital waiting room in Taiwan, a place you’ve returned to in order to seek more affordable medical treatment than the $53,400 in out-of-pocket expenses incurred while seeking diagnosis and treatment for the black holes that have mysteriously appeared inside your body. For the narrator of Jun Chou’s lyrical and surreal, “The Waiting Room,” this enigmatic meeting catalyzes a moving journey through landscapes both real and remembered in Taiwan and Brooklyn. Tender and incisive, “The Waiting Room” centers aging women in its meditation on modern medicine, kinship, and what it means to be a parent. Read Part I today!

first AWP conference ✅🎉 scholastic book fair on steroids was a teenage jun’s dream come true abundant gratitude & love to everyone i met or heard read who helped fuel my fire to write write write ❤️‍🔥

my valentine @lilygetslost and i hosted our first reading this past valentine’s day to celebrate romance & eros in her many forms 🌹 thank you to everyone who came and read something, be it an old love letter or a poem or some secret smut you wrote for a lover 🤭 also big thanks to @desertislandcomics @_purplepassion_ @therippedbodice @taillorgroup for donating goodies to our raffle; we raised $500 for @immdefense with your help!!! last slide is from nothing personal by james baldwin, a joyous celebration of love love love film photos by the incomparable @alexandra.clear 📸 see yall at the next one? ᵕ̈

CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER: Romance vs. Eros ❤️‍🔥 Fuck ICE - come defrost your heart February 14th, 4-6pm, Barzakh Cafe RSVP via link in bio join ly & @junnotjune (aka The Flat Men) as they battle it out ~ literary style ~ romance vs. eros! - we will start by setting the scene with some smutty-sexy-romantic readings - followed by a chance to write your own romantic/erotic pieces - ending with an open mic (sign up via the google form in the luma invite) plus, a raffle to win items including from @therippedbodice & @taillorgroup ! 🌹 (if you'd like to donate to the raffle, please get in touch!) let's take the bullshit capitalism out of vday and get hot & literary together bc there ain't nothing sexier than community <3 so bring your friends, lovers, crushes and we'll see you there! Sliding scale tickets on the door, with $20 suggested donation. 100% of donations and sales will go to @immdefense , which has been assisting against deportation for 30+ years. ₊˚⊹♡₊୨ৎ˚⊹♡₊୨ৎ˚⊹♡₊୨ৎ⊹˚♡₊୨ৎ⊹˚♡₊୨ৎ⊹˚₊ “Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama [...] For not only do we touch our most profoundly creative source, but we do that which is female and self-affirming in the face of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society.” ― Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power “what makes erotica radical is not the sex, it’s the honesty. it allows women to name what they want without having to redeem it. romance tells women that love will save them. erotica suggests they might save themselves through desire and curiosity. and that’s what makes it ethical, even when it’s transgressive. it’s the literature that lets women be whole.” — caitlyn on substack

choose your winter fighter

last reading + publication of 2025! thank you to @thirdplacezine for the platform to exalt my love of karaoke and to all the friends who harmonized with me during my reading….! 🎤😲🎶

miss u, spring!!! 🌸 📸 @hogi_fdolo

🎀 hairwork album for @mailiisaimei 💇🏻‍♀️ what started as an errant idea by em spiraled into a hair-cutting, hair-gluing party in my bedroom, a delicious braid-inspired cake, me, carrying loose locks around in my purse for weeks….all culminating in this chaotic continuation of hairwork, assembled into an album as a gift for mailiis’ birthday hairwork (aka hair jewelry) is a sentimental Victorian tradition where friends and lovers exchanged hair as symbols of affection feeling forever thankful to all my friends for being wacko enough to embark on this low-key psychotic mission with me & @em.b.shao i’m still finding people’s hair in my bed weeks later…promise not to perform any witchcraft on any of you 🕊️

been feeling extra grateful and sentimental for my time at @millayarts lately 💕 big thanks to @aaww_nyc for gifting me the opportunity to surround myself with the spirits of writers’ past in my studio thank you to my comrades @luciareissig @outlawplay @alice__miceli @weinbergmusic @knguyen for the reminders to rest, the decadent meals, the wine, the walks, the laughs it was a gift to share such magic and laughter over glasses of bourbon—a sweet miracle to have existed simultaneously at steepletop at all ✨