Metatron Press is thrilled to open pre-orders for Wavering Futures, the debut book by Kawai Shen.
A shape-shifting, formally daring work of short fiction and essays, Wavering Futures moves through intimacy, collapse, pleasure, and resistance—holding space for uncertainty while insisting on new ways of imagining how we live together.
Instead of lines of social propriety, I redrew my world according to baselines, coke lines, visible panty lines. I redefined my lifelines.
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About the Book
Written from the edge of ecological and emotional breakdown, Wavering Futures is a luminous, destabilizing collection of experimental and speculative prose—fragments that refuse easy answers and fixed genres.
Across three sections—Imaginary Utopias, Imminent Collapse, and Survival Tactics—the book traces how we relate, resist, and reimagine ourselves in moments of personal and planetary crisis. From quiet scenes of connection to surreal detachment and collective dreaming, Shen leans into instability not as failure, but as invitation.
Lucid, fragmented, and charged with erotic candour, Wavering Futures offers a soft yet searing portrait of life lived inside contradiction—written for anyone who feels unmoored by the present, but unwilling to give up on what comes next.
Advance Praise
“Never have I read such stunningly apt wishes and warnings to survive our fragmented fantasy-reality… This book will leave you aching and curious—and then stay with you.”
— Sennah Yee“Kawai Shen is my favorite agitator of revolutionary desire… Shen pursues her obsessions with such care and sureness I am a willing submissive, ready to follow wherever she goes.”
— Whitney Mallett“Alive with precise physicality… Impressive in its hybridity and multiplicity, Wavering Futures reminds us we can create our own inverted worlds.”
— Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch“From the mosh pit to the bacchanal, the riverbank to the dungeon, Kawai Shen plots a rollercoaster course through apocalypse… Climb on and let yourself hang upside down in Shen’s vision.”
— Lee Suksi
Author Bio
Kawai Shen is a writer based in Toronto. Her fiction was shortlisted for the Metatron Prize for Rising Authors and selected for the Best Canadian Stories 2025 anthology. She has published work in The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, The Ex-Puritan, khōréō, The Walrus, and The Whitney Review, among others.
Book Details
Title: Wavering Futures
Author: Kawai Shen
Release Date: May 16, 2026
Format: Paperback
Genre: Short Stories + Essays
Pages: 88 pages
ISBN: 978-1-988355-74-0
Product
Book — $20 CAD
E-book — available on release date
Spring 2026 Launch Tour
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Toronto — May 16 — TBA
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Montreal — June 7 — Parquette
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Pre-orders directly support the author and help sustain the work of small presses. Reserve your copy of Wavering Futures today.
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