XU XI 許 素 細

“Checkpoints” just published in Wordpeace, issue 11.2, Summer 2026

for the most up-to-date schedule details visit Events & Media tab

2026

September 26 Saturday: 3 to 5 pm Canadian book launch at Richard C Lee Canada Hong Kong Library, University of Toronto, Toronto, RSVP chk.library@utoronto.ca - for more information visit this link. Books will be available for sale.

September 27 Sunday: 4 to 6 pm book launch event, Toronto, Canada (location TBA).

October 17 Saturday: 2 to 4 pm Singapore book launch private event

October 21 to 25: Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia (schedule TBA)

October 28 Wednesday: 6:30 to 7:30 pm Hong Kong book launch & signing at Bookazine Landmark Atrium, 15 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong - register at this link

November 13 to 15: Singapore Writers Festival, book launch & featured author (schedule TBA)

November 27 to 29: Georgetown Literary Festival 2026, Penang, Malaysia (schedule TBA)

Horizon Hong Kong: Selected Stories, Gaudy Boy, New York, released July 1, 2026.  22 selected stories covering the 1960's to the present day with an introduction by Christopher Payne, University of Toronto, Scarborough.

“A brilliant moving and startling collection by one of the most brilliant moving and startling writers alive. I lack the words to capture the full sweep of these uncommonly beautiful stories, the human majesty and impossible histories they encompass. If you're going to read one book of stories this year, read Horizon Hong Kong, a collection of heartbreaks and awakenings set to lightning. A truly towering achievement.” - Junot Diaz This Is How You Lose Her and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“Upsetting the order of things”: book launch party event Q&A moderated by Gaudy Boy's publisher Jee Leong Koh

Four book reviews at Cha by Rebekah Chan, Jennifer Eagleton, Jonathan Han & Susan Blumberg-Kason

MONGREL INTERNATIONAL INC. offers exclusive, small-group, manuscript workshops (in person & online) led by Xu, private editorial services and limited writing retreats (by invitation only) at the Mongrel Writers Residence™ in New York, as well as other creative writing workshops and literary talks in partnership with festivals, bookstores & universities.  Upcoming events include:

September 27 Sunday from 1 to 2:30 pm: Creative writing workshop led by Xu “Writing the Short Story of Place” in Toronto, Canada.  Limited to 20 participants (first come first served).  FREE but registration required at chk.library@utoronto.edu.ca.  For further information visit this link.

What draws us to write about a particular place, whether it is our home country or elsewhere, or a private, intimate space vs. a public place shared by many. How does place influence the way we shape our stories? In this creative writing workshop, Xu will lead you through a series of writing prompts with a specific focus on exploring place for your fiction.  The goal is to leave with the start of a piece that you can develop into a short story.  Come with a laptop or notebook and be prepared to write and talk about writing, including about publishing short stories. No background necessary other than a love for reading fiction and literature. Co-sponsored by the Richard C Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library.

October 19 to 20: Two-day writing retreat co-sponsored by the Ubud Writers Festival.  “Writing Asian Stories for the World” - write the story only YOU can tell. This two-day intensive brings you together with fellow writers through structured critique, in-class exercises, and revision sessions. Arrive vulnerable and intellectually sharp, prepared to evolve. Submit your final piece and receive direct feedback from Xu Xi, securing the wisdom you need to own your voice and advance your art.  Limited to 12 participants.  Early bird pricing available until August 31.  For further information and registration, visit this link.

October 30 Friday from 4 to 6:30 pm: Creative writing workshop & talk hosted by Bookazine, at Bookazine Social in Tai Kwun, Parade Ground, 10 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong. “Writing & Publishing your Short Stories.”  For tickets and registration, visit this link.
  

October & November:  LIVE manuscript small-group workshops in Hong Kong & Singapore BY INVITATION (or application) only.  Go to the Mongrel International tab for further information and to reserve your space.

“The Problem of English in Translating Hong Kong” chapter in Translating Hong Kong, ed. Chris Zijiang Song & Tammy Ho Lai-ming, Routledge, UK 2026.

“2016 The Political Year” (excerpt from a novel-in-progress Memories of You), The Louisville Review, Louisville, Kentucky, Number 99, Fall 2026 (forthcoming); an earlier version was a Glimmer Train Fiction Open finalist, Portland, Oregon, July/August 2017.

“The UPS Delivery” (short fiction), Southword: New International Writing, The Munster Literature Center, Cork Ireland (forthcoming)

Xu Xi: “The Problem of English in Contemporary Literature” published with the papers presented at the Nobel Symposium (187) in Literature: Literary Judgment and the Forum of Criticism, ed. Sandra Richter, Mats Jansson, and Gisèle Sapiro, Series: DLAschriften / DLAwritings, Volume 22, Wallstein Verlag GmbH, Göttingen, Germany, December 2025.  

“Kickbacks” (a reflection on the meaning of home in the wake of Hong Kong's worst fire in decades), First Person with Michael Judge, January 9, 2026

“City Notes with iPhone” Press II Pause, Volume 9: two “snapshots” in images and prose of a longview take on transnational living: read at this link

Interview: “Exploring Stories & Their Reasons” by Josa Lukman in The Jakarta Post: Weekender, November 22, 2025, Jakarta, Indonesia.

Xu's novel manuscript The Milton Man selected as a finalist for FC2's 2024 Catherine Doctorow fiction prize

Honorary DFA degree award. On December 14, 2024, Xu Xi officially received her honorary doctorate degree (DFA - Doctorate of Fine Arts) awarded by her undergraduate alma mater, the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. Read a summary of her commencement remarks in the account of the ceremony.

Mongrel Intl. is now the imprint for new editiions of several of Xu's out-of-print titles, published as E Books and paperbacks. Currently available from all Ebook retailers: (click link under the title for further book information and to purchase directly)

Chinese Walls novel, 2nd E Book edition, January 2025

Daughters of Hui novella & three stories, 2nd E Book edition, January 2025

When her debut novel Chinese Walls first appeared in 1994, Xu was praised by the Far Eastern Economic Review as "a welcome new voice in the field of Asian fiction writers (who) rides the waves beautifully.”  Through the seven stories in this novel-in-stories, readers were brought behind the walls of a Hong Kong family, exploding all its secrets.  The controversial sexual content was startling at the time, but Xu's spare prose and quiet style impressed the Eastern Express who said it was “. . . like listening to a close friend talking about her life, her family, her love and her frustrations.” The novel is a close look at the way intimacy draws people together and pushes them apart, as echoed in the epigraph from a Confucius analect:

The Master said, "Men are close to one another by nature. They diverge as a result of repeated practice."

The Analects Book IV (translation D.C. Lau)

Daughters of Hui, her sophomore title comprises a novella Danny's Snake and three short stories, featuring four unrelated Chinese women surnamed Hui 許, which is the author's own name.  It was extremely well received and named an Asiaweek 1996 best book on Asia.   The International Examiner commended Xu's ”impressive ability to create believable characters that are fully human in their inner contradictions and complexity” and Window magazine said “(she) tackles taboo subject matter for Chinese women, like sexuality, adultery and seduction as an art form.”  The epigraph from Lao Tzu poses the question:

Your name or your person / Which is dearer?

Tao Te Ching Chapter XLIV Book Two (translated by D.C. Lau)

After the first print editions from Asia 2000 lapsed out of print, Chameleon Press re-issued a second compendium print edition with both titles in 2002. This included a preface by the scholar of Asian literature in English, Michael Ingham of Lingnan University who observed “Whilst it may not be particularly politically correct in post-handover Hong Kong to assert the values of linguistic and cultural pluralism among ethnically Chinese denizens of this hybrid Chinese city, the fact remains that it is often possible to tackle taboo subjects and employ a critical idiiom in a literary lingua franca without the deep cultural connections, inhibitions and linguistic hierarchies consonant with the use of standard Chinese.”

These reissued E Books allow readers a backwards glimpse to a Hong Kong that was, and reconfirms, once again, how, as Asiaweek said, that there's ”no question (Xu) gets to the heart of the matter.”

The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer's Guide and Anthology by Robin Hemley & Xu Xi, Bloomsbury, UK/USA, 2021.

”Fiction Remix” a chapter from her memoir-in-progress The Work Book, appears in the latest issue of New England Review (Vol 43.1). An excerpt was featured at LitHub, click here to read “Xu Xi on Living the Transnational Life”

Teaching Creative Writing in Asia, ed. Darryl Whetter includes Xu's essay ”Compromised Tongues: That Wrong Language for the Creative Writing We Teach in Asia”

All About Skin

Edited by Jina Ortiz & Rochelle Spencer, with a foreword by Helena Maria Viramontes, this exciting new anthology is, according to Pulitzer fiction author Junot Diaz, "electrifying and absolutely necessary." Xu’s work is the title story and the volume features twenty-seven stories by women of color. Published in November, 2014 by the University of Wisconsin press.

All About Skin was named a Ms. Magazine 2014 must-read feminist book of the year.