Shao Wei (poet)

Wei Shao is a Chinese-American poet and memoir author.

Shao Wei
Wei in 1998 receiving her master's degree at New York University.
Native name
邵薇
Born邵薇
(1965-02-07) February 7, 1965
Wanzhou District, China
OccupationTeaching
LanguageChinese (Mandarin), English
ResidenceCalifornia
NationalityUnited States
EducationPhD MFA
Alma materNew York University
University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Dallas
Home townWanzhou District, China
GenresPoetry

Nonfiction

Memoir
Notable awards
Children1
Website
Wei Shao

Life

Wei was born in 1965 and grew up by the Yangtze River in the city of Wanxian, later renamed to the Wanzhou District, Chongqing after the construction of the Three-Gorges Dam. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she lived mostly with her grandfather as an only child. She would see travelers in passing-by ships, which caused her to desire the freedom to travel. Living a frugal life and with not much to enjoy, she would take pleasure in reading books and watching Peking Opera. At the age of 16, she would go to Chongqing to attend college and major in English. She finished graduate study in China in 1991 and took the Test of English as a Foreign Language and Graduate Record Examinations. In 1996 she received a scholarship to study at New York University (NYU) and came to the U.S. as a graduate student. She credits her professor Galway Kinnell for encouraging her to keep writing poetry through many difficult situations in her new life and to break through her old consciousness of poetry writing.[1] She graduated from New York University with an M.A., an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at University of Texas at Austin, and Ph.D. in the School of Arts & Humanities at University of Texas at Dallas.[2] She taught Introductory Creative Writing at UT Dallas, and formerly taught at the College of New Rochelle, Rosa Parks Campus, and Chinese at the China Institute, in New York City.[3][4]

Her work appears in Parnassus, Crab Orchard Review, Seneca Review,[5] 5 AM,[6]

Awards

Works

Poetry
  • "Horse Riding"; "Chasing in the Wind", Homestead Review
  • "Spirit of Butterflies Lovers, Story of A Chinese Classic Music", Brooklyn Rail, May 2001
  • Pulling a Dragon's Teeth. University of Pittsburgh Press. 2003. ISBN 978-0-8229-5835-2.[8]
  • Nine Songs. Females, a poetry collection published in Chinese

Non fiction
  • Culture Bird: Looking for Myself in New York, Beijing, Guangming Daily Publishing House, 2001
  • "Homeland", Taibei, Taiwan New Century Publishing House, 2011

Review

Winner of the 2002 Agnes Lynch Starrett poetry prize, this volume depicts a woman creating an identity out of two cultures. Caught between China and America, East Sichuan and Manhattan, the Yangtze River and the Hudson River, Shao Wei searches for sources of nourishment in a world in which she is forced to cut her heart "into two halves?"[9]

References
  1. "Hoong, Yong Shu, South China Morning Post"
  2. http://www.utexas.edu/academic/mcw/students-honors.shtm. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. "BookDetails".
  4. "Shao Wei". University of Pittsburgh Press.
  5. "The Seneca Review". Hobart Student Association. 1 January 2001 – via Google Books.
  6. Staff03. "NewPages Book Reviews & Magazine Reviews - NewPages.com". Archived from the original on 2010-04-24.
  7. "browse". Archived from the original on 2006-05-24.
  8. "Shao Wei". South China Morning Post. 2 January 2005. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  9. "Wei, Shao. Pulling a Dragon's Teeth.(Book Review)", Library Journal
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