Xu Xi

Fiction Editor
Xu Xi

 

XU XI 許素細 is author of eleven books — five novels and six collections of short fiction & essays — most recently, the novel That Man In Our LivesC&R Press, 2016) and Interruptions (HKUMAG/Columbia Univ. Press, 2016-17), a collaborative ekphrastic essay collection with photography by David Clarke. Forthcoming are a memoir Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy for a City (Penguin China, July 1, 2017), Insignificance: Hong Kong Stories (Signal 8 Press, 2018) and This Fish is Fowl: Essays of Being (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2019-20). She has also edited four anthologies of Hong Kong writing in English.

Awards include an O. Henry prize story, the Ploughshares Cohen award for short fiction, the South China Morning Post story contest prize, a NYFA fiction fellowship; her novel Habit of a Foreign Sky was a finalist for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Her work has received international acclaim: the fiction collection Daughters of Hui was an Asiaweek 1996 top ten books of Asia; her novel The Unwalled City was a Pushcart editor’s choice and named one of HK Magazine’s top fifteen best books about Hong Kong; an essay “The English of My Story” was selected for the notable essays & literary nonfiction list in The Best American Essays, 2016. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies internationally. In 2001, The New York Times named her a “pioneering writer in English from Asia.”

She has taught as regular faculty at low-residency creative writing programs for over sixteen years, and served as faculty chair at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing. In 2010, she was named Writer-in-Residence at City University of Hong Kong where she established and directed Asia’s first low-residency MFA, an Asia-focused program that graduated poets, fiction and nonfiction writers who continue to publish well and win literary awards internationally (the program was closed, controversially, after only five years).  She has been writer-in-residence or visiting writer at several universities, including Arizona State University’s Virginia G. Piper’s Center for Creative Writing, the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction MFA, the Philippines National Writing Workshops at Silliman University in Dumaguete, Stockholm University, Lingnan University in Hong Kong, as well as at the Chateau de Lavigny in Switzerland, Kulturhuset USF in Norway, the Jack Kerouac Project in Florida, among others. Prior to teaching, she had an eighteen-year career in international marketing and management for major multinationals until 1998, when she surrendered completely to her writing life. She holds a MFA in fiction (1985) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

A Hong Kong-born permanent resident, former Indonesian national and now a U.S. citizen, Xu long inhabited the flight path connecting New York, Hong Kong and the South Island of New Zealand. She currently co-directs Authors at Large and splits time between New York and Hong Kong. Follow her @xuxiwriter on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

 

 


 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Books

That Man in our Lives, novel, C&R Press, 2016.

Interruptions, essays with photography by David Clarke, Hong Kong University Museum & Art Gallery/Columbia University Press, 2016.

Access Thirteen Tales, short fiction, Signal 8 Press, 2011.

Habit of a Foreign Sky, novel, Haven Books, 2010.

Evanescent Isles: From My City-Village, essays, University of Hong Kong Press, 2008.

Overleaf Hong Kong: Stories & Essays of the Chinese, Overseas, short fiction & essays, Chameleon Press, 2004

History’s Fiction: Stories from the City of Hong Kong, Chameleon Press, 2001; 2nd ed. with critical reading guide by Dr. Michael Ingham, Chameleon Press, 2005.

The Unwalled City, novel, afterword by Dr. Kingsley Bolton, Chameleon Press, 2001.

Hong Kong Rose, novel, Asia 2000, 1997; 2nd ed., Chameleon Press, 2004.

Daughters of Hui, short fiction, Asia 2000, 1996; 2nd compendium ed. with Chinese Walls, introduction by Dr. Michael Ingham, Chameleon Press, 2002.

Chinese Walls, novel-in-stories, Asia 2000, 1994; 2nd compendium ed. with Daughters of Hui, introduction by Dr. Michael Ingham, Chameleon Press, 2002.

 

 

Anthologies

The Queen of Statue Square & Other Stories: New Hong Kong Short Stories, ed. Marshall Moore & Xu Xi, CCC Press, Nottingham, UK, 2014.

Fifty-Fifty: New Hong Kong Writing, ed. Xu Xi, Haven Books, Hong Kong, 2008.

City Stage: Hong Kong Playwriting in English, ed. Mike Ingham & Xu Xi, Hong Kong University Press, 2005.

City Voices: Hong Kong Writing in English 1945 to the Present, ed. Xu Xi & Mike Ingham with a foreword by Louise Ho, Hong Kong University Press, 2003.

 

 

Anthologized Work

Fiction

“All About Skin” All About Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color, ed. Jina Ortiz & Rochelle Spencer, University of Wisconsin Press, Milwaukee, 2014.

“Manky’s Tale” with reflective essay on NYC in the 90’s LOCAL/EXPRESS: Asian American Arts and Community in 90s NYC, Asian American Literary Review, New York, 2014.

“Famine” The Bedford Introduction to Literature, ed. Michael Meyer, Bedford/St. Martin’s, New York, 2013.

“To Body To Chicken” Bridges Around the Globe: A Global Anthology of Short Stories, Temenos Publishing, Arkansas, 2012.

“Famine” The Seven Deadly Sins Sampler, Great Books Foundation, Chicago, 2009.

“The Sea Islands” Star Summit (Hong Kong Government secondary school approved textbook) Star Publishing Ltd., Hong Kong, 2009.

“Jazz Wife” The Jazz Fiction Anthology, ed. Sascha Feinstein & David Rife, Indiana University Press, 2009.

“Until the Next Century” Another Kind of Paradise, ed. Trevor Carolan, Cheng & Tsui, Boston, 2009.

“Famine” O. Henry Prize Stories 2006, ed. Laura Furman, Anchor Books, New York, 2006.

“Crying with Audrey Hepburn” Manhattan Noir, ed. Lawrence Block, Akashic Books, New York, 2006.

“Access” Collateral Damage, Silverfish Books, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Spring 2004.

Go Parents” Nineteen (women’s writing), Silverfish Books, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, March, 2003.

“Until the Next Century” (nominated Pushcart & Best of the Beacon) The Best of Carve Vol. 2, Mild Horse Press, Davis, California 2001.

Ch 14 Hong Kong Rose, NuyorAsian Anthology, Asian American Writer’s Workshop Press, New York, NY 1999.

“Philip and Me” Lovers, The Crossing Press, Freedom, CA 1992.

“The Fourth Copy” Home To Stay: Asian American Women’s Fiction, ed. Sylvia Watanabe & Carol Bruchac, Greenfield Review Press, New York, 1990.

 

Nonfiction

BG: The Significant YearsThe Near and the Far, Scribe, Melbourne, Australia, August, 2016; previously published Hotel Amerika, Chicago, Vol 8 No 2, Spring 2010.

“The Creative ‘I’ Workshop” Creativity & Discovery in the University Writing Class: A Teacher’s Guide (pp 209-217), ed. Alice Chik, Tracey Costley & Martha Pennington, Equinox, Sheffield, UK & Oakville, Connecticut, 2015.

“Winter Moon” Still, (responses to the photographs by Roelof Baaker), ed. Nicholas Royle & Ros Sales, Negative Press, London, UK, September 2012.

“On ‘A Modest Proposal’” Understanding the Essay, ed. Patricia Foster & Jeff Porter, Broadview Press, Canada, July, 2012.

“Global English in Contemporary Asian Fiction” Imagining Globalization: Language, Identity & Boundaries, editors Ho Hon Leung, Matthew Hendley, Robert Compton, and Brian Haley, Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.

“Playing the Changes” Now Write!, ed. Sherry Ellis, Tarcher/Penguin, 2009.

“Multi Culti Literati” Words Overflown by Stars: Creative Writing Instruction and Insight from the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Program, ed. David Jauss, Writer’s Digest Books, December 2008.

“Finding My English” HKID Anthology, Haven Books, Hong Kong, 2005.

“Native Tongues” The Renditions Experience, Renditions, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, May 2003.

“Solace in the Map for Lonely Hearts: Evans Chan’s Visionary Search” The Map of Sex & Love (film script) by Evans Chan, Youth Literary Books, Hong Kong, 2001.

“Writing the Literature of Non-Denial” Hong Kong English: Autonomy and Creativity, ed. Bolton, Hong Kong University Press, 2002; World Englishes, Oxford, UK, 2000.