Vanessa Hua is an award-winning, best-selling author. H er novel, Forbidden City—called “magnificent” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “new classic” by the San Francisco Chronicle, and “masterful” by the Washington Post— is a national bestseller and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Her novel, A River of Stars, was named to the Washington Post and NPR’s Best Books of 2018 lists, and has been called a "marvel" by O, The Oprah Magazine, and "delightful" by The Economist. Her short story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors' Choice, received an Asian/Pacific American Award in Literature and was a finalist for a California Book Award, and a New American Voices Award. H
A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she also received a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan literary award, a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, and a California Arts Council Artist Fellowship.
Previously, she was an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. For more than two decades, she has been writing about Asia and the diaspora, filing stories from China, Burma, Panama, South Korea, and Ecuador. She began her career at the Los Angeles Times before heading east to the Hartford Courant. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, San Francisco Magazine, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Newsweek, among other publications.
Other achievements include the Dr. Suzanne Ahn Award for Civil Rights and Social Justice coverage; a DeGroot Foundation award; longlist for the Granum Foundation Prize, the Asian American Journalists Association’s National Journalism Award — online/broadcast, print, and radio; the Society of Professional Journalists, the James Madison Freedom of Information Award, the San Francisco Press Club Greater Bay Area Journalism Award, San Francisco Press Club, and Best of the West. She was the Featured Literary Artist at APAture, an Asian American arts festival in San Francisco, and her short story collection was El Cerrito's pick for One City, One Book.
She is a graduate of Stanford University and UC Riverside's MFA program.
Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Guernica, The Sun, and elsewhere. She received an Emerging Writer Fellowship from Aspen Words, a fellowship at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and a writer's residency at Hedgebrook, among other honors. She’s taught at the Warren Wilson MFA program, University of San Francisco, Saint Mary’s College of California, Sewanee Writers’ Workshop, Aspen Autumn Words., Hedgebrook, Writer’s Winter Break, Community of Writers, Tin House Workshop, Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, Rooted & Written, Kearny Street Workshop, and elsewhere.
Find her work at your local independent bookstore, Bookshop, and other online retailers.