Ha Jin

Ha Jin was born in 1956 in Jin County, Liaoning Province. At age fourteen, he served in the PLA (People’s Liberation Army), staying on the Sino-Soviet border in Hunchun, Jilin. He left mainland China for America in 1985 to do graduate work at Brandeis University, earning his PhD in English and American literature in 1993. Since the early 1990s, he has been writing in both English and Chinese. He is the author of more than twenty books. In English he has published ten novels, four short story collections, four volumes of poetry, a book of essays and a biography of Li Bai. His awards include the National Book Award, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and the Asian American Literary Award. Currently he teaches fiction writing and migrant literature at Boston University, where he is William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor. He lives outside Boston with his family.