Biography
Vanessa Hua is an award-winning, best-selling author and former columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her novel, A River of Stars, was named to the Washington Post and NPR’s Best Books of 2018 lists, and has been called a “marvel” by O, The Oprah Magazine, and “delightful” by The Economist. Her short story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities, received an Asian/Pacific American Award in Literature, was a finalist for a California Book Award, New American Voices Award, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice.
For two decades, she has been writing about Asia and the diaspora, filing stories from China, Burma, Panama, South Korea, and Ecuador. She began her career at the Los Angeles Times before heading east to the Hartford Courant. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, San Francisco Magazine, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Newsweek, among other publications.
A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she also received a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan literary award, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing. She is a graduate of Stanford University and UC Riverside’s MFA program. Other achievements include the Dr. Suzanne Ahn Award for Civil Rights and Social Justice coverage; the Asian American Journalists Association’s National Journalism Award — online/broadcast, print, and radio; the Society of Professional Journalists, the James Madison Freedom of Information Award, the San Francisco Press Club Greater Bay Area Journalism Award, San Francisco Press Club, and Best of the West. She was the Featured Literary Artist at APAture, an Asian American arts festival in San Francisco, and her short story collection was El Cerrito’s pick for One City, One Book.
Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Guernica, The Sun, and elsewhere. She received an Emerging Writer Fellowship from Aspen Words, a fellowship at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and a writer’s residency at Hedgebrook, among other honors. Sign up for her upcoming workshops with ZYZZYVA and Hedgebrook. She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA program and the Writers’ Grotto. She’s also taught at Writer’s Winter Break, Community of Writers , Tin House Workshop, Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, Rooted & Written, and elsewhere.
Articles, Publications, and Appearances
Books
Appearances
Articles
-
South Korea: Everyone’s Journalist (Frontline/WORLD), Vanessa reports on the citizen journalism movement in South Korea
-
Vanessa Hua discusses immigration, identity, and her short story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities (KQED’s Forum)
-
The Dim Sum Revolution (San Francisco Magazine)
-
Interview with Amy Tan (San Francisco Chronicle)