2017 POETRY FACULTY
Don Mee Choi is the author of Hardly War (Wave Books, 2016), The Morning News is Exciting (Action Books, 2010), a chapbook, Petite Manifesto (Vagabond, 2014), and a pamphlet, Freely Frayed, ㅋ=q, Race=Nation (Wave Books, 2014). She has received a Whiting Award, Lannan Literary Fellowship, and Lucien Stryk Translation Prize. Her most recent translation of Kim Hyesoon, a contemporary Korean woman poet, is Poor Love Machine (Action Books, 2016). Choi also translates for the International Women’s Network Against Militarism. She was born in Seoul and came to the U.S. via Hong Kong. She now lives and works in Seattle.
Giles Li is executive director of the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, as well as a nationally recognized performance poet. His writing has been taught in curricula across the country, including Pomona College and the El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice in Brooklyn. His poetry has been published in several places, including ESPN.com, Solstice Magazine, and the Asian American Literary Review. He was one of three featured artists in the documentary film Art Beyond Borders, produced by the Transnational Studies Initiative at Harvard University, and also starred in the award-winning short comedy film The Humberville Poetry Slam. Giles is a recognized thought leader in Asian American communities nationwide. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Affairs from UMass-Boston and is an alumnus of the Institute for Nonprofit Practice. Giles has also served as adjunct faculty in the Asian American Studies program at UMass-Boston, and is a cross-sector leader who has served on several boards and committees, including the Task Force for Financial Literacy at the Office of the State Treasurer, the Advisory Board for the Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement and the Associated Grant Makers Board of Directors.
Prageeta Sharma was born in Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1972, shortly after her parents emigrated from India in 1969. She attended Simon’s Rock College of Bard for her undergraduate studies and received an MFA in poetry from Brown University in 1995 and an MA in media studies from The New School in 2002. She is the author of four poetry collections: Undergloom (2013); Infamous Landscapes (2007); The Opening Question (2004), winner of the 2004 Fence Modern Poets Prize; and Bliss to Fill (2000). Sharma received a 2010 Howard Foundation Grant and has taught in the creative writing program at The New School in New York City and in the Individualized BA program at Goddard College in Vermont. Sharma is currently an associate professor and director of the creative writing program at the University of Montana in Missoula.
2017 FICTION FACULTY
Lan Samantha Chang is Program Director and May Brodbeck Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of a collection of short fiction, Hunger, and two novels, Inheritance and All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost. Her work has been translated into nine languages and has been chosen twice for The Best American Short Stories. She has received creative writing fellowships from Stanford University, Princeton University, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Sabina Murray grew up in Australia and the Philippines. She is the author of the novels: Valiant Gentlemen, Forgery, A Carnivore's Inquiry, and Slow Burn; and two collections of short stories: The Caprices, winner of the 2002 PEN/Faulkner award, and Tales of the New World. Her stories are anthologized in The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction and Charlie Chan is Dead II: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian Fiction. She wrote the screenplay for the film Beautiful Country, which was an Independent Spirit Award Best First Screenplay nominee. Murray received her MA from the University of Texas at Austin, as well as fellowships from Radcliffe and the Guggenheim Foundation, a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Brown Literary Award from the University of Pittsburgh. Currently, Murray is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst MFA/creative writing program.
Matthew Salesses was adopted from Korea. He is the author of the novel The Hundred-Year Flood (Little A, 2015), an Amazon Bestseller, Best Book of September, and Kindle First pick; an Adoptive Families Best Book of 2015; a Millions Most Anticipated of 2015; a Thought Catalog Essential Contemporary Book by an Asian American Writer; and a Best Book of the season at Buzzfeed, Refinery29, and Gawker, among others. Forthcoming are a new novel, The Murder of the Doppelgänger (Little A, 2018), and a collection of essays, Own Story (Little A, 2019). His previous books and chapbooks include I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying (Civil Coping Mechanisms), Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity (Thought Catalog Books), and The Last Repatriate (Nouvella). In 2015, Buzzfeed named him one of 32 Essential Asian American Writers.
