.
It is my pleasure to announce that this spring Xuefei (say "shu-FAY") Jin, who you probably know as Ha Jin, will judge IBPC's 2008-09 poem of the year competition. He is our second National Book Award winner, and won for his novel Waiting (1999). He was born in Liaoning, China, in 1956, and became a soldier in the People's Liberation Army. He came to the US following his Masters in Anglo-American literature from Shandong University, and was studying at Brandeis when the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 occurred. He formerly taught at Emory University, and is now at Boston University. He is right now on leave in Germany, and it is from there that he e-mail me with this good news.
Here are some other awards he has earned with his writing:
Flannery O'Connor Prize for Short Fiction (1996)
PEN/Hemingway Award (1997)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1999)
PEN/Faulkner Award (2000)
Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fellowship (2000-2002)
Asian American Literary Award (2001)
Townsend Prize for Fiction (2002)
PEN/Faulkner Award (2005)
Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006)
Here is his faculty page at Boston Univeristy: English Department: faculty: Xuefei Jin (Ha Jin)
Here is his Wikipedia page, with bio and some good links: Ha Jin
Here he is speaking at Barnes and Noble at Boston University: BUniverse: A Journey to Freedom: Ha Jin Discusses His Latest Novel
And here are some poetry links:
Google Books Preview: Between Silences (1990) by Ha Jin
The Drunken Boat (Spring/Summer 2006--Chinese Feature)
Ha
Jin
Boston Review (August 1988) Ha Jin
.
