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Vanessa Hua

Biography

Vanessa Hua

Vanessa Hua is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the author of the novels FORBIDDEN CITY and A RIVER OF STARS, and a story collection, DECEIT AND OTHER POSSIBILITIES. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, among others. She has filed stories from China, Burma, South Korea, and elsewhere, and her work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic. She has taught most recently at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

Vanessa Hua

Books by Vanessa Hua

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.