Media

HKU Libraries' Reading Club: Is The Writer Her Character(s)?

21 Feb 2011

 

Theme Book : Habit of a Foreign Sky
Speaker : Ms Xu Xi (許素細女士)
Moderator : Richard Lord (Hong Kong-based freelance journalist)
Date : 24 February 2011(Thursday)
Time : 7:15 pm - 9:00 pm
Venue : Special Collections, 1/F, Main Library, HKU
Language : English

Registration: <http://lib.hku.hk/friends/reading_club/bt2011_03.html>

About the Talk

How much is a writer the character(s) of her novels? Authorial distance can often be hard to gauge in books that are supposedly "fiction." Come and join this provocative conversation between author Xu Xi and journalist Richard Lord as they discuss Xu's new novel Habit of a Foreign Sky. Xu will also give a brief, introductory reading from the book.

About the Speaker

XU XI recently returned to roost awhile in her birth city Hong Kong after a dozen or so years traversing the flight path connecting New York, Hong Kong and the South Island of New Zealand (plus spaces in between and beyond where a land mass beckoned). The author previously published seven other books of fiction & essays, including Evanescent Isles, Overleaf Hong Kong & The Unwalled City, and edited three volumes of Hong Kong writing in English, most recently Fifty- Fifty. She is currently writer-in-residence at City University of Hong Kong where she established and directs the world's first, international, low-residency Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) program in Creative Writing that specializes in Asian writing in English. She holds a MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Visit http://www.xuxiwriter.com/.

About the Book

For Gail Szeto, a mixed-race, single mother who loses her only child and mother in the span of two years, all she has left is a hard won career at a global investment bank. Torn between New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai, life rapidly goes into free fall for this woman with a complicated past, who was once so sure of her direction in life, and who now sees no clear path for herself. Habit of a Foreign Sky was a finalist for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize. Hyphen Magazine calls the novel "sexy" and The Straits Times says that the book has "no happy endings, only honest ones."

Media Contact:  Ms. Carmen Tsang, Tel: 2859 2211