Anna Sun

Anna Xiao Dong Sun (zh-c|c=孙笑冬, born 1971) is a writer, critic and sociologist.

Anna Xiao Dong Sun was born in Beijing in 1971. Her mother was a writer and editor, and her father was a translator of French literature. Her parents divorced when she was a child. Anna left Beijing to join her mother in San Francisco in 1992. She started writing fiction in Chinese since she was a teenager, but didn’t publish until 1995, while she was a student at UC Berkeley. She submitted her short story "The Blue Notebook" to "Today", a journal edited by the dissident poet Bei Dao (北岛), and it was discovered by the editor Wang Yu (王渝) from a pile of unsolicited manuscripts.

"The Blue Notebook", a story about the denial of passion, came out in "Today" a few months later (Winter 1995), then a journal published by Oxford University Press. It was later included in two anthologies: "Fissures: Chinese Writing Today" (Boston: Zephyr Press, 2000) and "The Season of Memory" (回忆的季节) (Beijing: 2001). The English version is translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-Chun Lin.

She completed her first collection of stories and personal essays in Chinese, "The Blue Notebook" (蓝色笔记本), while she was a graduate student at Princeton University. It was published in 2001 by Shanghai Literature and Arts Press (上海文艺出版社). Another blind submission, it was published only one year after the editor-in-chief Chen Baoping (陈保平) received the overseas manuscript. The book has received excellent reviews, both in national newspapers and literary journals. Many of the pieces in the book have been posted by readers on various websites, particularly the essay "The Loneliness of Eileen Chang" (绛唇珠袖两寂寞).

Anna Sun started writing fiction in English in the late 1990s, and her first story in English, "The Garden", inspired by Henry James’ "The Ambassadors", was published in "Harvard Review" (Fall 2000). Her literary criticism has appeared in "The London Review of Books" (2004). Her essays on Ezra Pound, "The Man That Is Waiting: Remarks on Li Po’s ‘Chokan Shin’ and Pound’s 'River-Merchant’s Wife'", first appeared in the journal "Paideuma" (29, iii), and can be found in the forthcoming anthology "Ezra Pound: Critical Assessments" (East Sussex, UK: Helm, 2006), edited by Dorsey Kleitz.

As a sociologist, Anna is trained at UC Berkeley (BA, 1998) and Princeton University. In 2003-04 she was a Mellon Dissertation Fellow at the Institute for Historical Research at the University of London, and in 2005-06 she was a Marilyn Yarbrough Dissertation Fellow at Kenyon College. Her dissertation deals with the sociology of religion and sociology of knowledge.

Among the many literary honors and award that Anna Sun has received are: Barber Fellowship, Squaw Valley Community of Writers Conference (1999); Vogelstein Foundation Grant for Fiction (1999); Mesa Refuge Fellowship (2000); MacDowell Colony Fellowship (2001); MacDowell/Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Fellowship (2001-02).

Anna Sun is currently teaching at Kenyon College. She also serves as a Consulting Editor for "The Kenyon Review".

elected Bibliography

* "The Blue Notebook" (2001).
* "Fissures: Chinese Writing Today" (2000).