About Me
Born and raised in Seattle, I hold a MFA in
creative nonfiction from Antioch University Los Angeles. In 2010, I received a Hedgebrook residency, and in 2009 I was awarded
a grant from 4Culture to work on a nonfiction book-in-progress. I have
completed a collection of memoirs, Searching for the Heart Radical: A Journey Between East and West, which
explores my inner and outer migrations between China and America, and themes of love, language, identity, compassion, and
relationships. My essays/memoirs have appeared in The Los Angeles Review, the
anthology Waking Up American: Bicultural Women on Identity (Seal Press), Thoughts Out of School (Peter Lang
Publishing), Stone Table Review, and other places. A
former Jack Straw writer-in-residence, I’ve read my work from coast to coast, and led writing workshops in schools,
community centers, prisons, colleges, and senior centers. I work one-on-one with experienced and beginning writers as a mentor/editor,
teach at venues such as the Richard Hugo House and the UW's Experimental College, and volunteer with youth at 826 Seattle.
My Philosophy
Writing is a process through which we can discover who we are, what is important to us, what we think, feel, and need
to say. As a writing mentor, I am here to help you access your most authentic voice and meaningful work.
I believe that is important to take risks as writers, and to allow ourselves to explore the places that hold the most energy,
charge, and emotion. To this end, I believe it is essential to write often, to write without censoring, and to develop an
understanding of your own writing process: from free-writing or journaling to the first attempts to shape and craft a piece,
to the many stages of revising, rewriting, publishing, and letting go.
Writing is an act of communication: first we seek
to communicate with ourselves, and once this dialogue grows strong, often we then yearn to communicate with others. This is
where revision, rewriting, and getting feedback and perspective comes in. Revision is a hard, yet crucial step in the writing
process. It’s what makes our vague, unformed ideas become piercing and articulate; it’s the difference between
telling someone about a place and taking them there; it’s the difference between relaying a surface situation and capturing
the deeper underlying story. Writing
is also an act of faith. You follow a spark of an idea and see where it goes. Often, the best writing lets go of preconceived
ideas and allows your natural flow of words to dictate the direction of a piece—especially in early “discovery
drafts.” A rare piece comes out in fine shape in an early draft; others may take months or years to gestate.
