Biography
Boo Sujiwaro is a neurodivergent writer and illustrator born in Bangkok, boarding-schooled in Auckland, now residing in Norwich. They’ve been published and featured in Reflex Fiction, Kotoba Japan, NAWE Magazine. In 2022, Boo was selected for the Lunar Codex project as one of the global literary artists whose works are to be immortalised on the moon in a time capsule via NASA Artemis partners in 2025.
They hold an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia, prior to which they read for BAs in Fashion Design at the Accademia Italiana and in English with Creative Writing at Keele University where they graduated with first-class honours and two awards. Boo is studying for a certificate in Editing at the Graham School, University of Chicago. Having grown tired of caucacity, they write to decentre the linguistic hegemony of the English language through stories that evoke nostalgia for the present.
They copyedited for a Japanese poetry organisation in Tokyo, localised translations for Korean webcomic publishers, and manned the register of a Thai food stall in the Norwich Market some Saturdays. In order of fluency, Boo understands English, Thai, Korean, Japanese, Danish. They identify as 100% Thai, regardless of DNA test results.
Academic Interests
While investigating dissociative narratives and the second-person social ontology, Boo has developed a fondness for interactive fiction and procedural rhetoric in game writing. Since 2018, they’ve done research and spoken on Ethnic Representation in Contemporary Children’s Literature and Decolonisation Practices in Publishing. Their other academic interests include Netizenship and Asian Internet Novel Cultures, Postcolonial Literatures, and Fan Studies. They would’ve liked to have been granted funding for a PhD that looks at fan cultural productions and Asian digital narratives/literatures via a postcolonial lens, or a mixture of studies to that effect.
Boo is open to seasonal lecture, writing workshop, and speaking requests.
Projects in Progress
I’m Fine
A product of a Japanese mother and a Danish father, Arne was born with a face that couldn’t be placed on a map. In the year that Japan’s youth suicide rate reaches a record high, Arne migrates from Denmark and begins his new life in a remote city in Shiga. He meets Naoki, a young hospital patient about to end his own life. On the waterlogged rooftop, amid frostbitten flowers, their fateful encounter thrusts Arne into a world where tragedy lurks around every corner.
I’M FINE, or ONLY ON YOU TODAY TOO THE SUN SHINES, investigates unspoken crevices of adolescence and the trauma you carry with you into adulthood—the novel, ultimately, asks: is loving someone enough to save them?
Hanbit
Your name is Riya Homgroom. All you want is to be respected beyond question.
You are an English-educated Thai, a devout Buddhist, a critically acclaimed novelist elevated to mainstream prominence by K-pop fandom power. You have two devastating secrets: (1) You are being haunted by the ghost of Hanbit, a Korean schoolgirl whose dream was to become a K-pop idol. (2) UK Home Office has declined your visa extension application. Shameful.
Three paths now lie before you. All of them lead to Hell. (1) Marry a balding White man to obtain Spouse Visa. (2) Return to Thailand as a failure. (3) Sign an exclusive contract with a K-pop conglomerate and relocate to South Korea.
HANBIT, or THINGS WE MISTAKE FOR LOVE, blends academic language with second-person voice to explore the futility of escapism in the era of social media and personal branding, the exploitations of Thai bodies in the K-pop industry, Theravada Buddhism in late capitalism, and Asian people fighting on the internet.
How much of your own story can you trust?
Once an MG fantasy with crossover appeal, reminiscent of Tim Burton’s comedic darkness with a touch of early Hardinge. Now undergoing narrative game adaptation. RUNERAN or THIS DEATH, TOO, IS YOUR FAULT is set in Siam, an alternate fantasy Thailand that is part-mystical desert, part-submerged underwater, powered by steampunk magic, populated by mythical creatures from Thai folklore.
Play as the titular war orphan who has a bounty on her head traversing mystical landscapes to reunite with her grim-reaper brother Neohazen. Choose her allies, outsmart supernatural dangers, keep her alive for as long as you can. And remember: Neohazen may or may not have good intentions. And Runeran may or may not turn out to be his weapon of mass destruction.