Running Away

The poet Ha Jin grew up in mainland China and came to the United States in 1985 to do graduate work at Brandeis University, beginning to write in English in 1990. Since then, he has written four volumes of poetry: Between Silences (1990), Facing Shadows (1996), Wreckage (2001), and A Distant Center (2018). In addition, he has published nine novels, four books of short fiction, and a biography of the poet Li Bai. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. For his work, Ha Jin has earned the National Book Award, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Asian American Literary Award, and the Townsend Prize for Fiction. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is a professor of English and creative writing at Boston University.