XU XI 許素細 is Indonesian-Chinese, born and raised in Hong Kong. An author of fourteen books of fiction and nonfiction, she is considered one of Hong Kong's leading writers in English. She has also edited five anthologies of Asian and Hong Kong writing. Recent titles include The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (2021), This Fish is Fowl: Essays of Being (2019), ), Insignificance: Hong Kong Stories (2018). Forthcoming is a new collection, Monkey in Residence and Other Speculations (2023), as well as essays and stories in Teaching Creative Writing in Asia (2021), Looking Back at Hong Kong: An Anthology of Writing and Art (2021), The Cincinnati Review (2021), Jewish Noir II (2022), Bending Genre (2022) and The New England Review (2022).

A diehard transnational, she long inhabited the flight path connecting New York, Hong Kong and the South Island of New Zealand.  Among her peregrinations: Distinguished Visiting Writer at the Virginia G. Piper Center of Creative Writing, Arizona State Univ., Tempe (2016); Distinguished Asian Writer at the Philippines National Writers, Silliman Univ., Dumaguete (2010); Bedell Distinguished Visiting Writer at the Univ. of Iowa's Nonfiction Program (2009); Writer-in-Residence at Lingnan Univ., Hong Kong (2009).  As well, she has been visiting writer or in residence at the Univ. of Stockholm, Hong Kong University, Chateau de Lavigny in Lausanne, Kulturhuset USF in Bergen, the Kerouac Project of Florida, among others.

Prior to 1998, she had a 18-year corporate career in marketing & management and held positions at several multinationals in the U.S. and Asia, including at Cathay Pacific Airways, Pinkerton's Inc., Federal Express, Leo Burnett Advertising and the Asian Wall Street Journal.  After leaving corporate life, she joined the prose faculty at Vermont College's MFA in Writing, and served a term as faculty chair. She was also Writer-in-Residence at City Univ. of Hong Kong where she established Asia's first, low-residency MFA in Creative Writing, after which she co-established with Evan Fallenberg a new International MFA in Writing and Literary Translation at Vermont College of Fine Arts where she is faculty co-director until June 2022. As of September 2021, she was named the Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.  She is also co-founder with Robin Hemley of Authors at Large, a collective of award-winning writers that offers international and online writing retreats & workshops. Her latest endeavor is the Mongrel Writers Residence™ in Northern New York.

Website: www.xuxiwriter.com

Twitter Username: @xuxiwriter

Employment

• Faculty Member (Prose) at Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing (December 2002 - June 2012)
• Faculty Chair at Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing (June 2009 - June 2012)
• Writer in Residence & MFA Program Director at City University of Hong Kong (March 2010 - June 2016)
• Faculty Co-Director at Vermont College of Fine Arts International MFA in Creative Writing & Literary Translation (December 2017 - )
• Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at College of the Holy Cross (September 2021 - )

Degrees

• Bachelor of Arts in English from SUNY Plattsburgh (June 1974)
• Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst (May 1985)

Genres of Interest

Fiction, Creative nonfiction, Poetry