45 Canadian writers of Asian descent

Sharon Bala is a Canadian writer residing in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Navtej Bharati is one of the most well-known Punjabi poets living in Canada. Born and brought up in Rode village near Moga in Punjab, India, he moved to Canada in 1960s. He now lives in London, Ontario with his wife Surinder Kaur. They have two children, a son Subodh and daughter Sumeet.

Olivia Chow is a former Canadian politician who was a federal New Democratic Party (NDP) member of Parliament (MP) representing Trinity—Spadina from 2006 to 2014. Chow ran in the 2014 Toronto mayoral election, placing third behind winner John Tory and runner-up Doug Ford, and served on the Metro Toronto Council from 1991 to the 1998 amalgamation and subsequently on Toronto City Council until 2005, when she ran for MP.

Adrienne Louise Clarkson FRSC(hon) FRAIC(hon) FRCPSC(hon) is a Hong Kong-born Canadian journalist and stateswoman who served as Governor General of Canada, the 26th since Canadian Confederation.

Ranj Dhaliwal, is a Canadian author.

Vekeana Dhillon is a Screenwriter, Series Creator, Playwright, Television Presenter, Radio Presenter and Actress.

Farzana Doctor is a Canadian novelist and social worker.

Winnifred Eaton was a Canadian author and screenwriter. Although she was of Chinese-British ancestry, she published under the Japanese pseudonym Onoto Watanna and under the name Winifred Reeve.

Sui Sin Far was an author known for her writing about Chinese people in North America and the Chinese American experience. "Sui Sin Far", the pen name under which most of her work was published, is the Cantonese name of the narcissus flower, popular amongst Chinese people.

Kim Fu is a Canadian-born writer, living in Seattle, Washington. She was born in Vancouver, British Columbia to immigrant parents from Hong Kong, Fu studied creative writing at the University of British Columbia.

Srinivasan Keshav is the Robert Sansom Professor of Computer Science at the University of Cambridge, with effect from 1 October 2019.

Vincent Lam

Vincent Lam is a Canadian writer and medical doctor.

Paul Sun-Hyung Lee is a Korean Canadian actor and television host. He is best known for his roles as Randy Ko in the soap opera Train 48 (2003–2005) and as family patriarch Appa in the 2011 play Kim's Convenience, as well as its television adaptation (2016–present).

Roselle Lim is a Canadian writer of Filipino-Chinese heritage whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese American experience. She was born in Quezon City, Philippines before immigrating to Toronto, Ontario Canada in the 1990s at age 10.

Tymo Lin, novelist, columnist and book critic, Lin is an author member of the Crime Writers' Association (UK), P. A. member of the Crime Writers of Canada, and director of the Mystery Writers of Taiwan. He was a finalist in The 4th Soji Shimada Mystery Awards for 2015, a mystery critic for books.com.tw, columnist for ETtoday (Taiwan), Distinctive Taste magazine, World Journal Weekly and The Mess-Age (Taiwan).

Elaine "Lainey" Lui is a Canadian television personality and reporter. She pens a website, Lainey Gossip, is an anchor on CTV's etalk, and is also a co-host on CTV's daily talk series The Social.

Nanda Layos Lwin is a Canadian author, music historian, journalist, civil engineer, and educator. He wrote the weekly ChartTalk column, a commentary of the current Canadian music charts; it appeared on canoe.ca from 1997 to 2002 and in The Hamilton Spectator from 2003 to 2006. He is the author and publisher of eight books including Top 40 Hits: The Essential Chart Guide (1999) and Top Albums: The Essential Chart Guide (2003), primarily documenting the chart history of the Canadian music magazine The Record.

Pasha Malla is a Canadian author.

Deepa Mehta, is an Indo-Canadian film director and screenwriter, best known for her Elements Trilogy, Fire (1996), Earth (1998), and Water (2005).

Michael D. Mehta is an environmental social scientist who specializes in science, technology and society with a focus on environmental and health risk issues. His recent work focuses on community resistance, resiliency and social innovation with a particular emphasis on citizen science. He was co-founder and coordinator of Help the Kelp Project, and was co-founder and a Director of community-based electrical non-profit society GabEnergy on Gabriola Island, British Columbia. In 2015 he formed three new organizations; namely, the Salish Sea Marine Ecosystem Society, Western Canada Renewable Energy Association, and the Gabriola Island Clean Air Society. He is a founding Director of an international organization called Doctors and Scientists Against Woodsmoke Pollution.

Richie Mehta is a Canadian film director and writer. His first feature film, Amal, was released in 2008, and was nominated for Best Motion Picture and Best Director at the 29th Genie Awards.

Shani Mootoo, writer, visual artist and video maker, was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1957 to Trinidadian parents. She grew up in Trinidad and relocated at the age of 19 to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Saleema Nawaz is a Canadian author whose works of short fiction have been published in literary journals such as Prairie Fire, PRISM International, Grain, The Dalhousie Review, and The New Quarterly. Nawaz was born in Ottawa, Ontario and later moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba in order to study English at the University of Manitoba, where she received her M.A. with a creative writing thesis. Her first complete collection of short fiction, entitled Mother Superior, was published by Freehand Books in 2008. Nawaz completed her first novel, Bone and Bread, published by Anansi Press in 2013, while residing in Montreal, Quebec.

Zarqa Nawaz is a Canadian creator and producer for film and television, a published author, public speaker, journalist, and former broadcaster.

Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn is a Vietnamese-Canadian writer, essayist, and television personality.

Ani Phyo is a Canadian-Born American organic chef, author, whole food and sustainable agriculture advocate. She is an advocate of raw foodism lifestyle promoting uncooked and unprocessed foods that are organic, sustainable, and supports green living.

Ian Iqbal Rashid is a poet, screenwriter and filmmaker known in particular for his volumes of poetry, for the BBC TV series This Life and the feature films Touch of Pink and How She Move.

Raheel Raza is a Pakistani-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker, media consultant, pro-Israel, anti-racism activist, and interfaith discussion leader. She lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Ajmer Rode is a Canadian author writing in Punjabi as well as in English. His first work was non-fiction Vishva Di Nuhar on Albert Einstein's Relativity in dialogue form inspired by Plato's Republic. Published by the Punjabi University in 1966, the book initiated a series of university publications on popular science and sociology. Rode's first poetry book Surti influenced by science and philosophical explorations was experimental and in words of critic Dr. Attar Singh 'has extended the scope of Punjabi language and given a new turn to Punjabi poetry'. His most recent poetry book Leela, more than 1000 pages long and co-authored with Navtej Bharati, is counted among the outstanding Punjabi literary works of the twentieth century.

Shyam Selvadurai is a Sri Lankan Canadian novelist. He is most noted for his 1994 novel Funny Boy, which won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction.

Gaurav Sharma is an Indian author and novelist, best known for his national (India) bestselling novel, God of the Sullied. His other books include, Long Live the Sullied, The Indian Story of an Author and a semi-autobiographical fiction Gone are the Days which he completed writing in ten months. Prior to Gone are the Days, Gaurav authored three textbooks related to the field of journalism and mass communication.

Aki Shimazaki is a Canadian novelist and translator. She moved to Canada in 1981, living in Vancouver and Toronto. She has lived in Montreal, where she teaches Japanese and publishes her novels in French, since 1991.

Rick Shiomi is an internationally recognized, award-winning Japanese Canadian playwright, stage director, artistic director and taiko artist, and a major player in the Asian American/Canadian theatre movement. He is best known for his groundbreaking play Yellow Fever, which earned him the Bay Area Theater Circle Critics Award and “Bernie” Award. Over the last couple decades, Shiomi has also become a notable artistic and stage director. He directed the world premiere of the play Caught by Christopher Chen for which he received the Philadelphia Barrymore Award Nomination for Outstanding Direction. He is currently the Co-Artistic Director of Full Circle Theater Company.

Sun Bo is a senior editor of newspaper and writer in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is a member of Chinese Pen Society of Canada (CPSC). He is also a member of the Toronto Chinese Writers' Association.

Kenneth Tam is a Canadian science-fiction author. His best-known works include The Equations Novels and the Defense Command series. He is the son of fellow Canadian author Jacqui Tam. He is a graduate student at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Waterloo, Ontario. Tam has been an author guest at the Polaris Science Fiction Convention for six consecutive years, and a guest at the Sci-Fi on the Rock convention for its first three years.

Mariko Tamaki is a Canadian artist and writer. She is known for her graphic novels Skim, Emiko Superstar, and This One Summer, and for several prose works of fiction and non-fiction. In 2016 she began writing for both Marvel and DC Comics. She has twice been named a runner-up for the Michael L. Printz Award.

Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic Asian communities. Thien's critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.

Kim Thúy Ly Thanh, CQ is a Vietnamese-born Canadian writer, whose debut novel Ru won the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction at the 2010 Governor General's Awards.

Meg Tilly is an American actress and novelist.

Bruce Poon Tip is a Canadian entrepreneur best known for founding the travel company, G Adventures and author of the bestselling book Looptail: How One Company Changed the World by Reinventing Business.

Priscila Uppal was a Canadian poet, novelist, fiction writer, and playwright.

Caroline Vu is a Canadian novelist of Vietnamese heritage.

Bennet Randall Wong, was a Canadian psychiatrist, author and lecturer who co-founded the Haven Institute, a residential experiential learning centre on the west coast of Canada, with Jock McKeen. His writings focused on mental illness, group psychotherapy, humanistic psychology and personal growth.

Jean Yoon is an American-born Canadian actress and writer of Korean descent. Yoon is best known for originating the role of family matriarch Umma in the 2011 play Kim's Convenience and in the award-winning CBC Television series adapted from the play, for which she won an ACTRA Award and received two Canadian Screen Award nominations.

Xiaowen Zeng is an award-winning Chinese-Canadian author living in Toronto, Canada.