CONTRACT EDITOR, CHINATOWN STORIES VOLUME 6
[Apply by March 21, 2025]
Paid Contract Position: May-September 2025
150 hours paid at $30.00 CAD/hour
About Chinatown Today
Chinatown Today is a non-profit based in Vancouver’s Chinatown, on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəyəm, Skxwú7mesh, and səlilwətaʔɬ nations. Through its signature publication, Chinatown Stories, as well as its website and events, Chinatown Today highlights community needs, educates the public, and shares Chinatown’s stories – past, present, and future.
About Chinatown Stories
Many of the Chinatown stories we yearn to listen to are carried by elders and knowledge holders who face linguistic, financial, and other barriers to sharing them, compounded by prejudice and the devaluing of these stories accumulated from rich and diverse experiences. These knowledge-holders include more than those with Chinese heritage, as Chinatown has always been a refuge and place of community for marginalised peoples across cultures and generations, including Indigenous peoples whose relationships with what we now call Chinatown spans since time immemorial. Chinatown Today aims to create spaces where Chinatown’s knowledge holders feel comfortable and empowered to share their stories with a wider audience, ensuring that the stories of Chinatown’s past and present can continue to be part of our future. Stories remind us of history, wisdom, and pieces of who we are as diasporic communities. Chinatown Today values these stories and those who share them as vital parts of Chinatown’s intangible heritage.
Chinatown Stories is Chinatown Today’s signature publication, seeking to highlight and share these stories in a tangible form through a physical magazine. With five volumes having been produced since the project’s inception in 2017, Chinatown Stories features the stories from a variety of voices and through a variety of media, disciplines, and artistic practices, helping us document and learn from Chinatown’s past and present to build a better future by and for the Chinatown community.
Our commitment to anti-oppression
Chinatown Today is committed to addressing systemic oppression and advocating for services and systems that seek to improve equity for oppressed and disenfranchised peoples, including but not limited to Indigenous, Black and people of colour. We aim to report and respond to news and issues involving Chinatown and its neighbours including Hogan’s Alley, Paueru Gai, and the Downtown Eastside through education, raising awareness, collaborating with community partners, and other forms of support.
We strongly encourage applications from applicants who identify as Indigenous, Black, racialized or persons of colour, or disabled, as well as those of various sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions.
Opportunity description:
Chinatown Today is seeking to hire one (1) Contract Editor for Volume 6 of our signature publication, Chinatown Stories. We are looking for an individual who is passionate about storytelling, particularly stories among/within communities in Chinatown, and who is interested in curating a publication that shares these stories with a wider audience. The Contract Editor will report to Chinatown Today’s board of directors, in particular the board Editorial Lead, Tim Lam, who will oversee and provide guidance on the publication.
Chinatown Today envisions Chinatown Stories Volume 6 as a fully bilingual (English & Chinese) publication and one that allows us to build upon the themes of previous volumes that explore the complex knot of collective histories that make Chinatown a space of refuge, community, activism and tension. Through the lens of a theme co-developed between the Contract Editor and the board of directors, we hope that Chinatown Stories Volume 6 will document Chinatown’s continuing legacy of activism, highlight the diversity of intercultural and intergenerational relationships in and with Chinatown, and engage with stories that value Chinatown as a place of living history. Chinatown Stories Volume 6 serves as an opportunity for an emerging or aspiring editorial professional to gain experience and ownership of a full print publication project while creating space for artists and community members to come together to share in the stories and experiences of being racialized in Chinatown, to collectively revisit individual understandings of culture, knowledge and history, and to imagine and create Chinatown’s more inclusive future.
As Editor, your main responsibilities will include:
- Project management and key editorial decision-making for Chinatown Stories Volume 6 from conception to publication, working closely with the Chinatown Today board of directors, in particular the board Editorial Lead, Tim Lam;
- Writing and promoting the call for submissions and pitches for contributions;
- Selecting submissions with the assistance of Chinatown Today volunteers;
- Corresponding with contributors to ensure the timeliness and quality of submissions/pitches in line with Chinatown Today’s editorial standards by providing guidance, refinement, and feedback;
- Interviewing community members for select articles;
- Coordinating with translators for the translation of interviews and contributions;
- Finalizing content for the design and printing of Chinatown Stories Volume 6; and
- Supporting the launch event for Chinatown Stories Volume 6, tentatively scheduled for October 2025.
This position is entirely remote and the Contract Editor is expected to provide their own Internet and electronic device with editing software (e.g. InDesign).
You can review past volumes here: Volume 2; Volume 3; Volume 4;
Qualifications/Requirements
- Experience and/or post-secondary training in creative writing, English, communications, journalism, linguistics, and/or related disciplines;
- Experience working with racially and culturally diverse communities, and a strong interest in the stories of racialized communities in Chinatown and Vancouver;
- Strong project management, organizational and communication skills, both written and oral; and
- A strong commitment or connection to Chinatown.
Key Assets
- Language skills in Chinese (Cantonese and/or Mandarin);
- Prior experience in copy-editing, proofing, publications, writing and editing; and
- Prior experience using (or comfort with learning) Slack, Google Drive, WordPress.
Work length, condition, and compensation
The Contract Editor of Chinatown Stories Volume 6 is a grant-funded position for a maximum of 150 hours paid at $30.00 CAD per hour. The Editor will work from May 2025 to September 2025 (approximately 6-7 hours per week on average). Should this project require amendment, and contingent on further funding, the length of the position can be extended with communication and negotiation between the Editor and the board of directors. Compensation for this position is fixed and is non-negotiable; it is not adjusted (up or down) based on education and/or experience.
How to apply
Please send your application by email to Tim Lam, Editorial Lead, Board of Directors, Chinatown Today, at tim [at] chinatown.today, indicating EDITOR, CHINATOWN STORIES VOLUME 6 in the subject line, by 11:59 pm on March 21, 2025.
Your application must include:
- Your resume,
- A short statement of interest (200-300 words), and
- One to two sample pieces of your writing.
Chinatown Today thanks all applicants for their interest and advises that only those selected for an interview will be contacted.
Draft Job Posting - Vol 6 EditorShare: 
