Xu Xi is the author of seven books of fiction and essays, and editor of three anthologies of Hong Kong literature in English. A Chinese-Indonesian native of Hong Kong, the city was home until her mid-twenties, after which she led a peripatetic existence around Europe, America and Asia. For eighteen years, Xi had a second career in international marketing and management with various multinationals. In 1998, she finally surrendered completely to the writing life. She holds a MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and teaches on the MFA in writing prose faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier. Xi’s awards include an O. Henry prize story, shortlist for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Award, and the South China Morning Post story contest winner, among others. She has also been writer-in-residence at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, Chateau de Lavigny in Switzerland, Kulturhuset USF in Norway, the Jack Kerouac Project of Orlando and the Anderson Center in Minnesota. In 2009, she was the Bedell Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Iowa's nonfiction program. According to reviewers, her work explains "the paradox that is Hong Kong" that avoids "the sex and drug and triad stereotypes . . . portraying the city more accurately and realistically for it."