Xu Xi (writer)

{{Infobox writer

| name = Xu Xi

| image = Xu Xi 2009.jpg

| image_size = 250

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| alt = Xu Xi standing behind a podium, speaking into a microphone

| caption = Xu Xi in 2009

| native_name = 許素細

| native_name_lang = cs

| pseudonym = Sussy Chakó

| birth_name = Xu Su Xi
许素细

| birth_date = {{birth year and age|1954}}

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| occupation = Author

| language = English

| nationality = United States{{cite web|title=Xu Xi |url=https://www.tupelopress.org/tupelo-team/xu-xi/ |website=tupelopress.org |access-date=27 December 2024}}

| citizenship = Hong Kong

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| website = {{URL|xuxiwriter.com}}

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{{Chinese

| title = Xu Su Xi

| t = 許素細

| s = 许素细

| p = Xǔ Sùxì

| j = heoi2 sou3 sai3

}}

Xu Xi (born 1954, originally named Xu Su Xi (许素细) also published as Sussy Chakó{{cite web |title=Catalog record for "Chinese walls" |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/38502025 |publisher=Worldcat |access-date=25 March 2023}}) is an English-language author and lecturer from Hong Kong.{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4yrpOutLrNIC&q=%22xu+xi%22&pg=PA105| title=Another kind of paradise: short stories from the new Asia-Pacific | editor=Trevor Carolan| publisher= Cheng & Tsui| year= 2009| isbn= 978-0-88727-684-2 }}{{Better source needed|reason=This reference mentions an anthology, and while that may contain a story by Xu Xi, it isn't demonstrable, and thus the reference doesn't support the preceding claim.|date=December 2024}}

She has been the Hong Kong regional editor of Routledge's Encyclopedia of Post-colonial Literature (second edition, 2005) and the editor or co-editor of the following anthologies of Hong Kong writing in English: City Voices: Hong Kong Writing in English 1945 to the Present (2003), City Stage: Hong Kong Playwriting in English (2005), and Fifty-Fifty: New Hong Kong Writing (2008).

Biography

Xu Xi is an Indonesian Chinese raised in Hong Kong. She worked in international marketing and management in Asia and North America until 1998, when she began writing and teaching full-time.{{cite web|url=http://www.english.cityu.edu.hk/mfa/html/faculty/xu-xi.jsp |title=Xu Xi | MFA in Creative Writing | City University of Hong Kong |access-date=13 April 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721092530/http://www.english.cityu.edu.hk/mfa/html/faculty/xu-xi.jsp |archive-date=21 July 2011 }} She is a graduate of the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Now a U.S. citizen, she served as faculty chair of the MFA fiction and creative nonfiction faculty at Vermont College in Montpelier from 2009 to 2012.

In 2010, she became writer-in-residence at the Department of English of City University of Hong Kong, where she established and directed the first low-residency MFA programme that specializes in Asian writing. In 2015, the university's decision to close the programme, at a time when freedoms in Hong Kong were felt to be under threat, drew criticism locally and from the international writing establishment.[http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/1785110/founder-cityu-creative-writing-programme Founder of CityU creative writing programme questions decision to cancel it], SCMP, 4 May 2015

Xu Xi is based between Hong Kong, where she works, and New York.{{cite journal|author=Nicola Kavanagh|year=2013|issue=14|title=Revolutionary Romance – Resolute Realism|url=http://www.theglassmagazine.com/revolutionary-romance/|journal=Glass Magazine|page=41|location=London|issn=2041-6318}}{{Better source needed|reason=Reference does not support preceding claim.|date=December 2024}}

Honours

The New York Times named Xu Xi a pioneer English-language writer from Asia, and the Voice of America featured her in their Chinese-language TV series Cultural Odyssey. Her 2010 novel, Habit of a Foreign Sky, was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Her short story "Famine", first published in Ploughshares, was selected for the 2006 O. Henry Prize, and she was a South China Morning Post story contest winner. She has received a New York Foundation for the Arts fiction fellowship, and she has held several writer-in-residence positions, including at Lingnan University in Hong Kong; Chateau de Lavigny in Lausanne, Switzerland; Kulturhuset USF in Bergen, Norway; and the Jack Kerouac Writers in Residence Project of Orlando, Inc. In 2009, she was the Bedell Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Iowa's nonfiction writing program, and she was the 2010 Distinguished Asian Writer at the Philippines National Writing Workshops at Silliman University, Dumaguete.

Xu Xi's work has received international acclaim: her short story collection Daughters of Hui made it into Asiaweek{{'}}s 1996 top ten books; her 2000 novel The Unwalled City was a Pushcart editor's choice and was named one of HK Magazine{{'}}s top fifteen best books about Hong Kong; and her essay "The English of My Story" was selected for the Notable Essays & Literary Nonfiction list in The Best American Essays in 2016.

Bibliography

{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PBsXXSXgLmEC&q=%22xu+xi%22| title=Chinese Walls| year= 1994| publisher= Typhoon Media Ltd| isbn= 978-988-19-5344-5 }}
{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3pmOI7jvvzQC&q=%22xu+xi%22| title=Daughters of Hui| year= 1996| publisher=Typhoon Media Ltd| isbn= 978-988-19-5347-6 }}
Hong Kong Rose (1997); Asia 2000, {{ISBN|978-962-7160-55-7}}; Chameleon Press, 2005, {{ISBN|978-988-97060-5-0}}
{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7rYwiDaYMqUC&q=%22xu+xi%22| title=The Unwalled City| publisher= Typhoon Media Ltd|year=2000| isbn= 978-988-19-5343-8 }}
History's Fiction: Stories from the City of Hong Kong, Chameleon Press, 2001, {{ISBN|978-1-387-80215-9}}
Overleaf Hong Kong: Stories & Essays of the Chinese, Overseas, Chameleon Press, 2005, {{ISBN|978-988-97060-6-7}}
{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2gqrXrZdT-UC&q=%22xu+xi%22| title=Evanescent Isles: From My City-Village| publisher= Hong Kong University Press| year= 2008| isbn= 978-962-209-946-3 }}
Habit of a Foreign Sky, Haven Books, 2010, {{ISBN|978-988-18-9672-8}}
Access Thirteen Tales, Signal 8 Press, 2011, {{ISBN|978-988-15161-9-0}}
That Man in Our Lives, C&R Press, 2016, {{ISBN|978-1-936196-50-0}}
Interruptions: with photographs by David Clarke and essays by Xu Xi, HKU Museum and Art Gallery, 2016, {{ISBN|978-9881902313}}
Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy for a City, Penguin, 2017 {{ISBN|978-0734399380}}
Insignificance: Hong Kong Stories, Signal 8 Press, 2018, {{ISBN|978-9887794868}}
This Fish Is Fowl: Essays of Being, University of Nebraska Press, 2019, {{ISBN|978-1496206824}}