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Vanessa Hua

Biography

Vanessa Hua

Vanessa Hua is the author of the national bestsellers A RIVER OF STARS and FORBIDDEN CITY, as well as DECEIT AND OTHER POSSIBILITIES, a New York Times Editors’ Choice.

A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she also has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a California Arts Council Fellowship, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, as well as honors from the de Groot Foundation, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Asian American Journalists Association, among others. She was a finalist for the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, and the New American Voices Award.

Previously, she was an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She has filed stories from China, Burma, South Korea, Ecuador and Panama, and her work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic. She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program and elsewhere. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

Vanessa Hua

Books by Vanessa Hua

Coyoteland
by Vanessa Hua - Fiction

When Jin Chang moves to the privileged community of El Nido with his wife and daughters, he hopes it finally will be the end of his bad luck. What his family doesn’t know is that he’s bending the rules for one final scheme: to make it big in real estate. Next door, Blair Belle prides herself on her progressive politics. But she can’t help but feel skeptical of the new neighbors, especially when she begins to suspect that Jin’s plans might interfere with the Belles’ own luxury development. Jin’s teenage daughter, Jane, is struggling to navigate El Nido’s cliques. Tasha Washington has always felt isolated as one of the only Black girls at the school. In the wake of a coyote attack, Jane and Tasha bond. Together, they hatch a plot to expose the town’s hypocrisies. The shock waves will rock their own families.

Forbidden City
by Vanessa Hua - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

On the eve of China’s Cultural Revolution and her 16th birthday, Mei dreams of becoming a model revolutionary. When the Communist Party recruits girls for a mysterious duty in the capital, she seizes the opportunity to escape her impoverished village. It is only when Mei arrives at the Chairman’s opulent residence --- a forbidden city unto itself --- that she learns that the girls’ job is to dance with the Party elites. She gradually separates herself from the other recruits to become the Chairman’s confidante --- and paramour. When the Chairman finally gives Mei a political mission, she seizes it with fervor. But the brutality of this latest stage of the revolution makes her begin to doubt all the certainties she has held so dear.

A River of Stars
by Vanessa Hua - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Holed up with other mothers-to-be in a secret maternity home in Los Angeles, Scarlett Chen is far from her native China, where she worked in a factory and fell in love with the owner, Boss Yeung. Now she’s carrying his baby. Already married with three daughters, Boss Yeung is overjoyed because the doctors have confirmed that he will finally have the son he has always wanted. To ensure that his child has every advantage, Boss Yeung has shipped Scarlett off to give birth on American soil. Then a new sonogram of Scarlett’s baby reveals the unexpected. Panicked, she escapes by hijacking a van --- only to discover that she has a stowaway: her housemate Daisy, who intends to track down the father of her child.