Degrees

Ph.D., Creative Writing, University of Denver, 2019
M.F.A., Prose, University of Notre Dame, 2015
B.A., Literary Arts and International Relations, Brown University, 2011

Teaching Interests and Philosophy

I write and teach prose—fiction, creative nonfiction, and narrative forms that resist or exceed genre categorizations. My goal in the classroom is to broaden and deepen my students’ sense of narrative possibilities and literary community. I believe it is important for aspiring writers to read books that cannot be found in the traditional literary canon, or on a bestseller or award list if they are to produce art that does more than uphold the status quo. I mostly teach works by historically marked and/or marginalized writers, works in translations, and works published by smaller, independent presses. I view my role in the classroom as that of a facilitator, rather than an authority, and I strive to create a non-hierarchal space where my students can be active participants in the creation of knowledge, rather than passive recipients of it.

Creative and Research Interest 

My research interests center on the concept of alterity and how it is constructed through language and stories. My first book, The End of Peril, the End of Enmity, the End of Strife, a Haven is a language-driven novel that investigates questions of home, inheritance, and lineage. It follows an unnamed narrator who returns to her ancestral home in an environmentally ravaged city and must confront the city’s legacy of war and colonialism. The novel is about the experience of liminality—of being between two places, between the past and the present, between environmental devastation and environmental renewal. 

My second book, Names for Light, is a family history project that is, in part, a subversive response to a lifetime of being asked to act as an interpreter and representative of “my” country, “my” people, and “my” culture. The book consists of multiple, interwoven narratives that traverse time and place, and its non-linear and associative logic is a way for me to write about my experience of migration and exile without relying on false dichotomies such as before and after, or here and there. For me, experimentation with form and narrative structure is about asking how language can be “un-othering,” how it can allow for contradiction and ambiguity. 

Selected Publications 

Books: 

Names for Light: A Family History, Graywolf Press, 2021

The End of Peril, the End of Enmity, the End of Strife, A Haven, Noemi Press, 2018

Anthologies:

Best Small Fictions 2019 (print anthology, November 2019

Forward: 21st Century Flash Fiction (print anthology, March 2019)

Journals and Magazines:

Gulf Coast (Volume 32, Issue 1, October 2019): “The Misadventures of Ba Gyi U Taung”

Fairy Tale Review (Pink Issue, March 2019): “Providence”

The Black Warrior Review (Issue 42.2 Spring/Summer 2018): “Bliss Place”

TriQuarterly (Issue 153, January 2018): “The Women of the House”

The Kenyon Review Online (November 2009): “A Boy and His Sister”

Selected Awards, Honors, and Residencies 

Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, Adult Fiction | January 2019

Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize | Winner | June 2018

Entropy Magazine’s Best Books of 2018 | December 2018

Best American Essays Notable Essay | “Becoming” in Territory | September 2019

New Delta Review’s Matt Clark Editor’s Choice Prize | September 2018

Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net Anthology 2016 | January 2017

The Millay Colony for the Arts | May 2018

Tin House Writers’ Workshop Fellow July 2015

Hedgebrook Writer-in-Residence | April 2012