City University of Hong Kong Dep
Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics
Research Seminar
Fiction Hong Kong in My Language of Alienation
Presented by
Xu Xi
Vermont College of Fine Arts
Date: 20 November 2008, Thursday
Time: 4:30pm - 6:00pm
Venue: B7603 (Lift 3, 7/F, Blue Zone), Academic Building, CityU
Abstract
Recent involvement with the Tongzhi Literary Group has forced an examination of the alternative sexual lives and experiences that feature in much of my Hong Kong related fiction. Writing in English of and from this Cantonese city seems to open a vista to the kind of alienation that an alternative sexual world embodies. This lecture will investigate that tendency in my work, to offer some thoughts about the creative process that the English language might evoke for a fiction writer from and of Hong Kong.
Speaker
Xu Xi is the author or editor of ten books, most recently Evanescent Isles (essays) and Fifty-Fifty (ed. anthology). Recent fiction featuring alternative sexual lives and experiences appears in Muse (a 3-part serialized story titled "Lady Day"); earlier work featuring same include her novels The Unwalled City, Hong Kong Rose and Chinese Walls, as well as the stories "Loving Graham", "Until the Next Century", "The Tryst", "Crying with Audrey Hepburn", "The Fourth Copy" among others, which appear in her own collections and in literary journals and anthologies. The author is on the prose faculty of the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and also teaches creative writing in Hong Kong and elsewhere. She holds a MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and splits time between New York, Hong Kong and the South Island of New Zealand. See www.xuxiwriter.com for further information.
