Jacqueline Chia, writer | musician | artist
I am a writer, academic, and multimedia artist working primarily with music, writing, and sound. My relationships with writing and playing music started around the time I was five years old, and both endeavours have kept me going all these years. Some big life changes in the last five years have culminated in a deep perspective shift with regard to my creative practices, and after a lifetime of teaching literature and writing academic essays on weekdays, and playing jazz shows during weekends, I am now starved for a personal space that enables me to dive deeper into creating work: writing my first volume of poetry, funded partially by Toronto Arts Council, and working on a music project, Feela’s World, among other things.
Music
My primary instruments are the trombone and vocals though I play other instruments as well. I have been playing the trombone since I was seven years old, and have built a career out of performance, beginning in the classical arena and eventually landing in blues, funk, and jazz. In the last decade or so, I have been focused in community and music work around the genres of swing and New Orleans Jazz (up to the Revival era). Currently, I am returning to an older love of world music, salsa, Brasileira, Afro-cuban Jazz, folk, and ambient.
I’m on a hiatus from playing shows as I embark on a new musical project, Feela‘s World, a sonic documentary of sorts layered with field recordings obtained from my travels through Latin America, original music compositions, and narratives. I say “sonic documentary of sorts” as the project strives to instigate listeners to a deeper practice of interpretative and inferential listening within a polyphonic world. Follow me on this journey beginning July 2026!
Writing
I am an interdisciplinary literary scholar with research interests in contemporary literature, digital topographies, media studies, philosophy. I am currently at the tail-end of my Ph.D. in Literature at York University, Toronto, writing a dissertation on narratives and digital topographies. I’ve also been teaching at universities and colleges as an adjunct professor up until 2023 due to health issues. This led me to review my approach to literature and writing, as well as to evaluate my continued participation in educational and institutionalised forms of capitalist and fascist ideologies. Currently, my focus is on finishing the dissertation, a poetry manuscript partially funded by the Toronto Arts Council, titled, The Garden of Good Bones. Increasingly, I find myself writing short stories as well.
Visual Arts
Growing up, I attended weekly painting and art lessons at a small art school for ten years. In my twenties I participated in group shows and sold a couple of paintings. Since then, I’ve only painted intermittently. I am currently developing an interactive art piece, The Chairperson, which highlights the policing and vanishing public spaces.
narratifs.com 