More About my Writing Residency in China This Fall

I announced a couple of months ago that I’ve been asked to be a resident writer at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, this fall.

I have a few more details about it:

The residency is sponsored by the English Creative Writing Center at Sun Yat-Sen University, the only program in China focused on creative writing in English.  The programs founder and director is a writer herself, Dai Fan.

The residency begins on October 22 and lasts through Nov. 18.   For the first two weeks, we’ll be in Yangshou in the Guangxi Autonomous Region with no duties other than writing.  (The featured image here, of Yangshou, is from the China and Asia Cultural Travel website.)  Next, we’ll spend a week at Sun Yat-sen’s main campus in Guangzhou, giving talks and readings and meeting with faculty and students.  Then, the last week, we’ll be back to writing, this time in Meizhou in Guangdong Province.

I’ll be there with seven writers from six other countries–for information on them and their work, click on their names below:

Charlson Ong, the Philippines

Elisa Biagini, Italy

James Scudamore, Great Britain

Monica Aasprong, Norway

Sally Ito, Canada

Vladimir Poleganov, Bulgaria

Zdravka Evtimova, Bulgaria

I’ll post some of their work in the days ahead.

I haven’t been blogging on this site lately but I will during my time in China.  For now, if you’re interested in learning more about the program and what I’ll be experiencing, check out this edition of Ninth Letter with links to creative works by participants in the program two years ago.

A Writing Residency in China This Fall

In March, after my talk on the ethics of biography at the Associated Writers and Writing Programs conference in Tampa, Florida, a Chinese writer named Dai Fan, who directs the creative writing program at Sun-Yat Sen University in Guangzhou, China, came up to me and invited to be part of a writing residency there this fall.  It’s taken a while for the paperwork to be done but I can announce now that I will be joining writers from seven other countries for four weeks of writing, lectures and readings this October and November.

We’ll have two weeks free for writing in the beautiful autonomous region of Guilin (pictured here), a week of talks and readings in Guangzhou, and a final week of writing in the cultural capital of Meizhou.

I’ll give more details, including the names of the other writers and the countries they’re from, in a future post.

The creative writing program at Sun Yat-sen University is the only one of its kind in English in China.  Students from the program will be our interpreters while we’re there.  I anticipate many interesting conversations with them, as well as the other writers and the program faculty.