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David Ly is the author of Mythical Man (Anstruther Books, 2020) and Dream of Me as Water (Anstruther Books, 2022), both shortlisted for ReLit Awards for Poetry. He co-edited, with Daniel Zomparelli, Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022). David’s poems have appeared in publications such as Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, PRISM International and The Ex-Puritan, where he won the inaugural Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence for Poetry, as well as in the Pan MacMillan anthologies He, She, They, Us: Queer Poems (2024) and You’re Never Too Much: Poems for Every Emotion (2025). He is the Poetry Editor at This Magazine.
""[Dream of Me as Water] felt like a welcome escape from reality's constraints. I happily 'swam the waterways / of long-gone mangrove forests, ' with Ly's spinosaurus, and imagined I, too, could heal as well as a giant pacific octopus which 'magically grow / a whole body / of newfound limbs.'"" - Gem Yelin Lee - The Peak ""David Ly's debut collection Mythical Man is a sincere and honest book that communicates the feeling of ache, in both desire for others' bodies and desire for self-knowledge and self-transcendence."" - Jake Byrne - Arc Poetry ""For this enormously fun horror anthology, Ly (Mythical Man) and Zomparelli (Everything Is Awful and You're a Terrible Person) bring together 32 pieces of short fiction and poetry unified in their stance that to be a monster is not such a bad thing - and that it is perhaps the only possible escape from the heteronormative world."" - Publishers Weekly on Queer Little Nightmares ""In Mythical Man, every word is chosen with immense thought. Words are used with new meanings, and repetition is used with powerful irony. Every page turned from the book, I was amused, charmed and surprised. This debut collection proves that Ly is an unforgettable voice that we need in literature. His writing is raw, eloquent, and authentic."" - Hasan Namir - Prism International ""The central metaphor in David Ly's poetry collection is water. In Vietnamese, the word for water - nước - is the same as the word for 'country, nation, homeland.' In tight and accessible poems, Ly takes on the slippery notion of belonging, showing us what it takes to stay afloat and to dream. These are love poems to the self, touching on race, queerness, and identity without ever letting them overwhelm the poet's crystal-clear voice."" - Vinh Nguyen - Hamilton Review of Books on Dream of Me as Water
