© Photo by Em X. Liu
Em X. Liu is a Chinese diaspora writer and physician born in Tianjin and currently living between Toronto and Vancouver. Em is the 2024 Astounding Award nominated author of The Death I Gave Him and If Found, Return to Hell.
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For rights, permissions, or any business inquiries, please contact my literary agent: Penelope Burns of Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents
▮ Novels
THE DEATH I GAVE HIM
A queer, locked-room science fiction mystery inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, published by Solaris in 2023
Hayden Lichfield’s life is ripped apart when he finds his father murdered in their lab, and the camera logs erased. The killer can only have been after one thing: the Sisyphus Formula the two of them developed together, which might one day reverse death itself. Hoping to lure the killer into the open, Hayden steals the research. In the process, he uncovers a recording his father made in the days before his death, and a dying wish: Avenge me...
With the lab on lockdown, Hayden is trapped with four other people—his uncle Charles, lab technician Gabriel Rasmussen, research intern Felicia Xia and their head of security, Felicia’s father Paul—one of whom must be the killer. His only sure ally is the lab’s resident artificial intelligence, Horatio, who has been his dear friend and companion since its creation. With his world collapsing, Hayden must navigate the building’s secrets, uncover his father’s lies, and push the boundaries of sanity in the pursuit of revenge.
Buy now: SolarisBookshopBlackbondBarnes & Noble Amazon
“Liu’s exquisite prose perfectly marries physicality and emotionality, the visceral and the sterile. This is Hamlet reflected in a fractured mirror. Every angle on the familiar comes as a surprise; every new edge cuts with razor intelligence. And oh, the tension! It will murder you.”
— Shelley Parker-Chan, author of She Who Became the Sun
“Blazingly ambitious, immaculately written, imaginative, and oh goodness, I can absolutely keep going. The Death I Gave Him is the locked-room murder mystery queer Hamlet retelling of my dreams.”
— Cassandra Khaw, author of The Salt Grows Heavy
▮ Novellas
IF FOUND RETURN TO HELL
“Welcome to One Wizard! How may I help you?”
Being an intern at a wizarding firm sounds magical on the page, but in practice mostly means getting yelled at by senior mages—and angry clients who’ve been turned into platypuses. So when Journeyman Wen receives a frantic call from a young man who’s awoken to a talisman on his bedroom wall and no memory of how it got there, they jump at the chance to escape call center duty and actually help someone for once.
But the case ends up being more complicated than Wen could ever have anticipated. Their client has been possessed by a demon prince from Hell, and he’s not interested in leaving...
▮ Short Fiction
“Stellar Evolutions in Pop Idol Artistry” (2024)
Published in Clarkesworld Issue #214
6640 words. Sci-Fi.
Out there, the crowd is waiting. Mingming knows they must be—vaster and hungrier than any he has seen so far in his career—but all he can make out is a dark mass, rolling, rushing, rising to reach him where they think he will appear.
“Suckle, Swallow” (2024)
Published in X-R-A-Y, July 2024
1360 words.
In my mouth, your name is silt and sweet freshwater, like the stream that bounded you and yours into that space the rest of the village didn’t dare cross.
“r/hobbydrama [KPOP] DaNSE: the group where a drug scandal wasn’t even the biggest drama in the fandom” (2024)
Published in Ment Magazine.
3500 words.
Will the groups of tomorrow finally, finally be managed well, stay together, and find wild popularity without falling apart?
“In You To Burn” (2023)
Published in Night of the Living Queers, Wednesday Books
Horror.
She’s seventeen and she’s angry, and there’s the fire, leaping eagerly through her veins.