about bad @ reading

Hi! My name is Jane Shi, and I’m a poet, writer, editor, book reviewer, and organizer.

I have been writing poetry since I was eight years old. My debut poetry collection, echolalia echolalia, came out in 2024 with Brick Books and was shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. In 2025 I won Arc Poetry’s Critic’s Desk Award for brief review for my review of Gillian Sze’s quiet night think.

I was inspired to begin this journal in light of the passing of disabled writer, activist, editor, and community organizer Alice Wong in November 2025, after several years of being her friend and comrade.

Among many things, Alice promoted and uplifted disabled authors like no one’s business. She regularly posted giveaways on her Disability Visibility Newsletter for disabled readers to win free books. It was a beautiful way to uplift disabled authors in an ableist, saneist, and colonial publishing industry run on racial capitalism.

Alice Wong is irreplaceable. I want to keep her legacy alive in a small way, not just through her advocacy, but also her readership, curation, and literary community-building.

I have been writing book reviews for a few years in print and online magazines, as well as casually on GoodReads and Storygraph.

I have always wanted to be a part of literary communities and cultures that didn’t rely on corporate monopolies complicit in genocides, and that didn’t wield cultural production as a tool of suppression and violence against marginalized people. Something Alice taught me is that there’s really no better way than to create what you want to see in the world, and be who you want to see reflected.

In addition to poetry collections, I’m also interested in zines, comics, films (yes, yes, I have a letterboxed account), multimedia, and all kinds of non-fictions. While the intention of this journal is to focus on poetry, I won’t box myself in genre-wise in what I discuss.

I hope to eventually be able to solicit reviewers and critics other than myself.

In many ways, this project is an experiment in what we can create without relying on major funders or corporate sponsorships. The reality may be grim: I may end up writing three things, and stop in a few months. But I’m interested in trying this out for a bit, knowing that no matter what life throws at me, I’ll still be reading poetry, thinking about poetry, and writing poetry.

The name of this journal, bad @ reading, is a subversion of the name GoodReads, a play on my unreliable reading habits, and a meditation on the idea that there is a right or wrong way to read poetry and literature. Poetry is Bad for You, Poetry Is Dead, and Ren Yamakawa’s “Bad At Reading” patch (which I have stencilled on my jean jacket) are also inspirations.

This journal will be updated on crip time. Thank you so much for reading.