I was born in Hong Kong, the youngest of four children. For my first years of schooling, I attended the Diocesan Girls’ School (DGS for short) from kindergarten to Form Upper Six. Then, I went on to college in Japan and America. I graduated from Princeton University with an AB in English and Creative Writing, and a PhD in Comparative Literature, and have taught English Literature at Fordham University and Chinese Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Now I live in Austin Texas with my family and two dogs. I have recently started cello lessons, and I love it. Thus, the photo.

         Perhaps because my father was brought up by Anglican monks in British North Borneo and spoke Chinese Hakka, a dialect foreign to the rest of our family, and English, which my mother did not understand, I have often acted as a sort of go-between for them even as a child, that is, between Cantonese and English, because DGS is an English school. Then, I was chosen in Form Five, to go on a one year high school exchange program to Japan as a sort of junior ambassador between the Chinese and the Japanese peoples. These accidental circumstances of my birth contributed to my eventually becoming a translator. Coupled with the fact that I have always loved poetry, especially what we used to call “verse-speaking” at school and, for some years, taught literature to college students, my writing career should not come as a surprise to anyone.

         When my first child was born with myriad health issues, I had to give up full-time teaching, but this also meant I had more time to read and write. I am fortunate that my spouse is supportive, both financially and otherwise. Some of my more recent translations of modern Chinese literature and classical Chinese poetry can be found in such publications as Poetry Magazine, Words Without Borders, Two Lines, The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature, Bamboo Shoots After the Rain, and Renditions.

         One day eight years ago, as I went through the many photos my mother left me, I found a small poster with about eight or nine pictures of herself pasted on it. On closer scrutiny, they were each taken about ten years apart. I realized that it was a sort of journal. This prompted me to throw a dinner party to remember her on her birthday, which is on the First Full Moon of the Chinese New Year. At the party one of my friends, Virginia Raymond, suggested I start a writing group, and another friend, Nancy Vine Durling, immediately jumped in. I woke up at five in the morning the next day and embarked on writing in earnest on what I called my mother’s story. I had always thought her life “read” like a book, and I had started it quite a few times before, at different times in my life, taking different routes to find my way into her mystery. This time, it was as if the floodgates were opened, and I finished the first draft in seven months, on my own birthday. It was like a haunting, I told my friends.

         After a few rewrites I sent it off for publication. This first iteration, called The Gift of Sunshine, won the place of finalist in the unpublished novel category of the International Eyelands Book Awards, 2020. Feeling that it was not quite done though, I added a couple of chapters and discovered it should be called The Price of Sunshine, and a couple of excerpts of this version was accepted by The Write Launch and published on their website.

         Recently, I have been reworking it as a speculative memoir, interspersing it with “strange tales” from the Liaozhai. It is told “almost in Cantonese,” my mother tongue. I say this because much of it is told in recollections of conversations, and many idioms and aphorisms, even classical poems and Confucian “advice” are strewn in these originally Cantonese conversations.  I feel that this take on our story, now called Inch-Tall Grass, will hold. It feels right. You can find a sample of it here: Chapter I: Mahmi and Me.

         In the field of translation, my most significant contribution up to now has been in completing Wang Wen-Hsing’s important Modernist masterpiece, Family Catastrophe, 家變 (jia bian), which is in University of Hawaii Press’s Fiction from Modern China Series. I am grateful that the late Professor Wang had seen fit to let me have the exclusive rights to its translation into English. It took him seven years to write, and it took me five years to render into English.

         My China in Tang Poetry , as the title implies, is almost an autobiographical book of stories and translations, which describes my lifelong exposure and experience with the poetry of this period. I have studied and enjoyed these poems all my life, and my years of teaching have taught me how best to make them accessible. As teacher, storyteller and poet-translator I wanted to act as your medium and your guide through this Golden Age of Chinese poetry. Because allusions to ancient stories are like a vocabulary in classical Chinese poetry one must develop a certain familiarity with this history, these stories, in order to feel comfortable in one’s approach to the poetry. In academic studies,  such stories are usually buried in footnotes. In these “guidebooks,” I hope to make it easier for you to hear the voices of my ancestral ghosts.

        My China in Tang Poetry  is followed by another series of old stories and poetry, this time, in two volumes, Northern and Southern Song Poets called Hundred Tongues and What the Cuckoo Said. (See under "Books" here).

        Besides the memoir and these two series of poetry, I am also putting together a collection of essays which I had written on and off about my life with Anne, my first born who lives with an extra chromosome; her twenty-first pair comes in triplets, confusing much that goes in and out of her head, actually, all her cells. I had wanted to convey the many surprises she had in store for me, not the least of which is the fact that she is an artist. Recently, with the help of my wonderful new friend, Laura Gibbs, I have created a website for her with bits of her story and some of her artwork placed in it. This has only just begun so you should check back in a few months. The collection of essays is collectively called Annescapes, and I'll call it a collaboration, between Anne and me.

         Beyond writing and taking care of Anne, I also paint, sew, make jewelry, and have been involved with volunteer community work, even took on the role of Editor for the Asian American Quarterly sponsored by the now defunct Asian American Alliance, and for a short stint, worked for a downtown boutique, which also unfortunately didn’t last, acting as their “Art Director” (the owner was ambitious). It was called Giada. We even had a theme for the place, branding it with a butterfly, for transformations! In between those activities, I started a little business called “Pucksgold Projects,” after Shakespeare’s Puck and Peter Pan (love potion and sprinkling of magic dust). That was when I painted the switch plates I talked about in my blog. Pucksgold also published my first book of poetry which told the story of Li Yu, that was when I started to put poets and their poetry into the contexts of their lives. I even included some of my own calligraphy and sketches, all black and white, and called it A River in Springtime: My Story of Li Yu in Myth and Poetry, and the text has been reworked into Hundred Tongues.

In the spring of 2025, my cello teacher, Dr. Chi-Hui Kao, of nine months and I were invited by Austin's Community College to do a program on Tang poetry where I collaborated with Chi-Hui, wrote a script combining her music with my recitation of poems from My China in Tang Poetry. It was so well received that we decided to form a duo and called ourselves "Note After Note." To get some sense of what we intend to do with this, please visit our YouTube sample on my home page. Last spring was also when I started volunteer teaching at Olli, University of Texas's Lifetime Learning Institute. And so it goes . . .