FREE
Free Write with Xu Xi
Free Write with Xu Xi - Writing Transnationally of our Global Village
We all live in a “global village” where life is increasingly transnational in terms of what we see and experience, whether from news or social media, travel, work or life relocations, or in the people we meet in our neighborhoods and workplaces. Yet how do we write of this reality— of other cultures, people, languages, countries — without resorting to clichés and stereotypes? In this workshop, we will consider ways to enrich our creative writing by sharpening our transnational writer’s eye. We will do writing exercises using transnational literary examples, and respond to a series of questions and writing prompts to find ways to voice this global reality.
XU XI 許素細 is author of fourteen books — five novels, one memoir and eight collections of stories and essays. Her latest titles include This Fish is Fowl: Essays of Being (2019), Insignificance: Hong Kong Stories (2018) and the novel That Man in Our Lives (2016). Forthcoming in October is The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, co-authored with Robin Hemley with whom she co-founded Authors at Large, a company that hosts international (and online) writing retreats and workshops and offers mentorships for writers with their collective of authors. Most recently, Xu established the Mongrel Writers Residence™ as a hideaway for “mongrel” writers like herself.
Xu has taught writing at universities and colleges worldwide for almost twenty years and currently co-directs The International MFA in prose for creative writing & literary translation. Previously, she had a long career in international marketing and management in the U.S. and Asia. An Indonesian-Chinese-American diehard transnational, she has split most of her life between Hong Kong, where she was born and raised, and New York City. These days she splits her life, unevenly, between the state of New York and the rest of the world. Follow her @xuxiwriter on FB, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. www.xuxiwriter.com