Tucson Festival of Books

Yiming Ma (he/him)


Born in Shanghai, Yiming Ma is the author of "These Memories Do Not Belong to Us," which was a Spotify Editor's pick and featured in The Washington Post, CBC Books, Strait Times, and Electric Literature. He holds an MBA from Stanford and an MFA from Warren Wilson College, where he was the Carol Houck Smith scholar. Ma spent a decade in the tech and finance world before writing his first book. His stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times and The Guardian. His story “Swimmer of Yangtze” won a Guardian 4th Estate Short Story prize. 

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Communities: Asian American, Neurodivergent


Scheduled events:
Our World, Shifted
Join Tochi Onyebuchi, Yiming Ma, and Moniquill Blackgoose as they discuss building speculative fiction worlds by defamiliarizing the present. They'll explore how temporal displacement, cultural reimagining, and environmental transformation, can create both the deeply familiar and the startlingly new.

Integrated Learning Center Room 130 (Seats 143, Wheelchair accessible)  View this venue on the Festival map
Sat, Mar 14, 4:00 pm - 4:55 pm
Sci-Fi / Fantasy / Horror
Signing area: Sales & Signing Area - Integrated Learning Center (following presentation)  View this venue on the Festival map

Panelists: Yiming Ma, Tochi Onyebuchi, Moniquill Blackgoose
Moderator: Betsy Labiner
Sponsors: Session made possible courtesy of Sara Cohen, The Neymeyer Family
Control and the Speculative Imagination
What happens when technology, society or mysterious forces manipulate our lives? What does it take to reclaim things? This panel brings together three authors who explore speculative and futuristic worlds where the stakes are high, and the choices are both personal and profound.

Student Union Sabino (Seats 87)  View this venue on the Festival map
Sun, Mar 15, 11:30 am - 12:25 pm
Fiction / Literature
Signing area: UA Campus Store Book Sales (Mall) (following presentation)  View this venue on the Festival map

Panelists: Nikki Erlick, Yiming Ma, Eshani Surya
Moderator: Bond Lammey
Sponsors: Session made possible courtesy of Joan and Adrian Van Loozenoord, Susan Eck

Book:
These Memories Do Not Belong to Us
A Constellation Novel
Sci-Fi / Fantasy / Horror
HarperCollins Publishers
August 2025
ISBN 9780063413481
224 pages
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