Stella Wong is the author of SPOOKS, winner of the Saturnalia Books Editors Prize, and AMERICAN ZERO, selected for the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize by Danez Smith. A graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Wong's poems have appeared in POETRY, Colorado Review, Lana Turner, Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, the LA Review of Books, and more.

Other poems by Stella Wong in Verse Daily:
May 3, 2022:   "Antimatter" "I'm taken as an only child..."
April 25, 2022:   "When the still breathing watch the stillborn" "He was born in the year of the dog..."
December 1, 2020:   "While I'm Not a Heroic Couplet" "America, I am not a negative..."

Books by Stella Wong:

Other poems on the web by Stella Wong:
Two poems
"to bear false whiteness"
"response to a tracklist from god quarantining with his ex"
Two poems
"on a list of games that buddha would not play, number 8 is"
"Halloween"
"Not Your Bernini's Daphne"
Two poems
"Fu er dai"
Two poems
"The sign for power"

Stella Wong's Website.

Stella Wong on Twitter.

About Spooks:

"Stella Wong wields the kind of weaponry I live to be slayed by. Funny as hell, delightfully strange and full of a sneaky and giant heart, holds its beloved subjects — friends, siblings, Lucy Liu, grapefruits, all the jesuses the poet can muster — and gives them body with wicked imagination and knock-out tenderness. This book will knock the windows of your heart not just open, but out the frame once you see how far Wong can dive into fear and the terrible possibles of humanness can still carry back something like hope, gooder than joy. Wong has crafted a brief, but mighty collection of poems that point towards the bright possibly of power to make us better dreamers, better lovers, better homies, and oh my jesuses how thankful I am for this abundant offering. I'm sure you will be too."
—Danez Smith

"If poetry were a biathlon, Stella Wong would take the gold. She's a solid skier and a crack shot, each poem a bullet hitting its mark. Thank God she's turned all of this energy and accuracy into poetry. 'Where do you put your body of color' she asks. Then proceeds to school everyone. Stella Wong is a force, a maker, a master."
—D.A. Powell

"Spooks is an inquiring of rhythms. Its poems think in rhythms derived from many cultural sources, but most often from hip-hop as filtered through everyday speech—but not only rhythms derived from music, but also rhythms derived from the motions of culture both at the center and the periphery of Stella Wong's attention. While foregrounding various rhythms, the poems in Spooks defy those sources thereof that are rooted in patriarchy and other forms of oppression—these poems ask what new songs can be made of a tainted music, even while being such songs."
—Shane McCrae

"Reading SPOOKS is the most fun I've had since dandelion-ing at a fetish party. The titles are brilliant. The speakers of the poems are secret agents, search engineers and dissociative fugues. The poems are elastic with tones that range from hilarious deadpan one-liners to astonishing tenderness. 'Oh, love is at // no cost to you' reads one poem and I'm like 'yr gonna make me cry right after you made me laugh.' If Catullus were around, he'd be so proud."
—Cy Jillian Weise

"Spooks is, among other things, a generous and richly populated book. The poems are both challenging and welcoming, filled with as many entrances and exits, as much warmth as honest, as much risk as playfulness. This is a beautiful book of enduring images, and masterful storytelling."
—Hanif Abdurraqib