Hilda Hoy

Introduction

Hilda Hoy is a Taiwanese Canadian writer, editor, and journalist who grew up in Taipei and Kaohsiung and is now based in Berlin. She has worked as a reporter for the "Toronto Star" and "Prague Post," written narrative non-fiction for "Roads & Kingdoms," "Slate," "BBC Travel," and "Narratively," amongst others, and published a cultural guidebook titled "The Hunt: Berlin." She now works across genres, with ongoing projects spanning fiction, non-fiction, and a graphic novel. The diaspora experience and examinations of identity and belonging are central themes in her writing.

Resident planning

During her residency at the Taiwan Literature Base, Hilda will continue work on an essay collection about the complexity of language as a means to construct personal, cultural, and transnational identities in people with migration backgrounds. Under the working title "More Than Words," the collection explores the experiences of heritage language speakers: those who grow up in a home where a non-majority language is used by parents or relatives. As the dominant language of society supersedes the language of the home, heritage language users often grapple with questions of identity, feelings of inadequacy, and the inability to communicate with relatives or connect fully with their culture of origin. "More Than Words" is a hybrid work blending memoir, narrative non-fiction, interviews, and interdisciplinary research in linguistics and postcolonial and migration studies.