2026 Art Writing Mentorship

May 6, 2026

Centre A’s third biennial Art Writing Mentorship is a 16-week summer intensive aims to introduce you to art writing and criticism through weekly writing workshops, peer reviews, visits with arts professionals, site visits, and one-on-one consultations.

Led by Dr. Yani Kong, the mentees will develop and put into practice a set of skills for writing critically about the fine and performing arts. These skills will be cultivated in two mutually informing ways: by reading, researching, and analyzing a selection of popular and academic arts criticism and other forms of arts writing that operates across the disciplines; and by workshopping their own writing and creative projects. The cohort cultivate skills towards writing critical reviews and essays; program and gallery notes; artist, curatorial, and mission statements; and other forms of creative responses.

Yani Kong (Mentor) is a writer, editor, and scholar of contemporary art in Vancouver, Canada. She has published essays for The Photographer’s Gallery, London, UK; The Gordon and Marion Smith Foundation, Vancouver BC; The Freedman Gallery, Reading, PA, among numerous reviews. Kong hold a Doctorate in Contemporary Art from the School for the Contemporary Arts (SCA) at SFU, where she researched reception aesthetics, ethical philosophy, and contemporary art history. As the managing director of the Small Files Media Society she explores digital ecology and sustainable practices in filmmaking and streaming media. Kong is a faculty member at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Culture and Community.

Adam Arca is a queer Filipino migrant rights organizer, writer, and cultural worker living on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver, BC). A son to migrant workers from Bulacan in Luzon and Cebu in Visayas, their work is deeply informed by care and the archipelagic connections between anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles from Turtle Island to the Philippines. They are the creative-nonfiction winner of Briarpatch Magazine’s 14th Annual Writing in the Margins Contest and the poetry runner-up for the 2025 Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence. Their essays and poetry can be found in The Ex-Puritan, Plenitude Magazine, Ricepaper, and The Funambulist, among others.

Aretha Pereira is a South Asian writer, curator, and artist. Her work studies archival relationships, seeking to catalogue memory, history, and connection across bureaucratic structures of inclusion/exclusion. In writing, she prioritizes communication that de-centers eurocentric standards for language, vocabulary, and style. Currently, she is the Assistant Curator at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, where she helps plan and execute exhibitions, off-site projects, public programming, residencies and publications. Pereira holds a BFA in Illustration from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and was the recipient of the SAAG Arts Writing Prize in 2023.

Chimgee Mendee (she/her) is a creative and emerging writer and curator from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, based in so-called Vancouver. Her practice nestles in and around writing, event curation, graphic design, and illustration. She is the founder of and gatherer behind hotmothertruckers, an events page that curates, amplifies, and archives local arts and community programming, with a focus on grassroots arts and QTBIPoC events and spaces. Her work is shaped by an interest in how people encounter art, and how access, language, and care shape those experiences. She is inspired and propelled by the expression and action of community, how we come together, what we create for each other, and how we build with and for our full selves.

kathy feng (b. Guangzhou, China) is an interdisciplinary artist and arts worker, and is a guest living and working on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations, also known as Vancouver, BC. As an immigrant and child of immigrants, she grew up in a constant process of learning, unlearning, and relearning. This framework informs the themes that ground her practice: of memory, obscuration, tenderness, and love. Her work finds form in text, still and moving image, and craft. She holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University, and previously worked at SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Her personal practice consists of blurry photos of the moon and fuzzy recollections of her dreams.

Maximilliano Chi Leung Alserda (he/him) is a writer & poet from Hong Kong. He is based in Vancouver on the unceded lands of the Stó:lō, Tsleil-Waututh, Musqueam & Squamish nations. He just graduated from the Writing & Literature program from Capilano University. He was a contributor, editor & finalist for The Liar, CapU’s literary magazine’s 2025 issue & also a reader at the 2026 North Shore Writers Festival. He specializes in collaborative editorial work and is interested in the local history of HK people, Chinese traditions and reexamining cultural myths & folklore. He wouldn’t be here without his family’s support.

Guest Speakers

Am Johal is Executive Artistic Director of the Indian Summer Festival. He previously was Director of SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement and Co-Director of SFU's Community Engaged Research Initiative. He has collaborated on four book length projects. He is Chair of the Vancouver International Film Festival and Vice Chair of Greenpeace Canada.

Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross is a writer and editor based in Vancouver, the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her fiction, poetry, essays, and art criticism have appeared in BOMB, C Mag, The Ex-Puritan, Fence, Mousse, and elsewhere. The Longest Way to Eat a Melon, her debut collection of fictions, was published by Sarabande Books in 2025. She is currently Art Editor at The Capilano Review, a west coast journal of experimental poetry and visual art.

Mercedes Eng is a poet, aunty, and volunteer. She recently co-curated her first exhibition with Keimi Nakashima-Ochoa, Inside/Out: the art show my dad never had, and is the author of four books, including Prison Industrial Complex Explodes, winner of the 2017 BC Poetry Prize, and cop city swagger, a finalist for the 2025 Vancouver Book Award. Her writing has appeared in the Lambda-nominated anthology Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry, Jacket 2, Asian American Literary Review, TCR and The Abolitionist. Mercedes teaches creative writing in prisons and at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Engaging in shared risk and community care, she is against borders, bosses, and bros and knows all cats are beautiful.

Shazia Hafiz Ramji's writing is forthcoming in the Literary Review of Canada and has been anthologized twice in the Montreal International Poetry Prize anthology. She lives in Vancouver, Toronto, and London, UK, where she teaches art writing and creative writing. Shazia is the author of Port of Being.

Cindy Mochizuki creates multi-media installation, animation, drawing, audio fiction, performance, public artworks, films and community-engaged projects. She has exhibited her work in Canada, US, Australia, and Japan. Recent exhibitions include the Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum, The ACT Gallery, Art Gallery at Evergreen, Kamloops Art Gallery, Prince Takamado Gallery, and Nanaimo Art Gallery. She has created illustration and animation design for theatre companies including the Arts Club Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Rumble Theatre, Theatre Replacement, and Little Onion Puppet. She has received the Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award in New Media and Film (2015) and the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts VIVA Award (2020).

Maandeeq Mohamed is a writer, editor and researcher living in Tkaronto. She is a PhD Candidate in English and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto, and the Associate Editor of C Magazine.

Whess Harman is a member of the Carrier Wit’at Nation, a nation amalgamated by the federal government under the Lake Babine Nation and currently resides on the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. He doesn’t like cops and believes in land sovereignty for Indigenous peoples all across the globe, including Palestine. In his arts practice he works primarily in drawing, text and textiles. As an independent curator and occasional editor and contributor to a variety of small publication projects, he prioritizes emerging queer and BIPOC cultural workers and artists.

SF Ho (they/them) is a porous object. They live on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ peoples. Operating somewhere between words and whatever words can’t be, their work is informed by feminist methodologies, land-based practices, and grassroots community networks. Ho has presented their art and writing both regionally and internationally. They published a book about love and aliens called George, the Parasite. They’re cultivating a practice of wary sociality, never finishing books, and being sort of boring.

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