Ai Jiang

Ai Jiang was born in Fujian, China, emigrating to Canada with her parents when she was four years old.^[2] She can speak Mandarin, though she cannot read or write the language.^[3]

Jiang attended University of Toronto as well as Humber School and the Gotham Writers' Workshop. She received a Creative Writing master's from the University of Edinburgh,^[2] completed in 2022. Jiang is married, and she has made writing her full-time career. Her hobbies include badminton and managing her Instagram foodie account.^[4]

Jiang began writing on Wattpad early in high school, influenced by fantastical romances. She later focused on dark fantasy, science fiction, and horror, her current specialties, inspired by movies such as Shutter Island, Us, Parasite, and Get Out, as well as the literary works of Ursula K. Le Guin, Shirley Jackson, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Toni Morrison. In particular, she absorbed their works' focus on atmospheric, character-driven as opposed to fast-paced, plot-driven works. The majority of Jiang's characters are Asian diasporas, though this is more a function of Jiang's background than a conscious authorial decision.^[5] Similarly, Jiang's writing features many female characters, exploring political and social issues in her writing.^[6] Jiang uses speculative fiction to explore the persistence of current injustices into the future, should they be allowed to continue.^[4]

Her work has appeared in a wide variety of speculative venues including Interzone,^[7] Uncanny Magazine, The Dark Magazine, Pseudopod, Radon Journal,^[8]The Deadlands, Dark Matter, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, in which her Nebula Award nominated story, "Give Me English", appeared in 2022,^[9] the same year she was the recipient of the Odyssey Workshop’s 2022 Fresh Voices Scholarship. In addition to short fiction and nonfiction, Jiang also has published poetry.^[7] When she writes science fiction, it tends toward the "softer", less technical side.^[10]

Jiang's first long-form work, the novella Linghun (Dark Matter INK), was published April 2023. Other projects released in 2023 include a collection of Jiang's short stories, Ai Jiang’s Smol Tales from Between Worlds (Spring 2023), ^[11] the novelette, "I AM AI" (June 2023), and a novel-length expansion of "Give Me English".^[9] A full member of the SFWA and the HWA. In 2025, she released a novella with Titan Books titled A Palace Near the Wind, which is the first in a science fantasy duology.

In June 2026, it was announced that her novelette "I AM AI" had been optioned for a feature film adaptation.^[12]

• Linghun (Dark Matter INK, 2023)
• "I AM AI" (Shortwave Publishing, 2023)
• Ai Jiang’s Smol Tales from Between Worlds (2023)
• A Palace Near the Wind (Titan Books, 2025)
• An Empire in the Clouds (Titan Books, 2026)

She was the recipient of Odyssey Workshop’s Fresh Voices Scholarship (2022).