Shawn Wong

Shawn Hsu Wong (born 1949) is a Chinese American author and scholar. He has served as the Professor of English, Director of the University Honors Program (2003–06), Chair of the Department of English (1997–2002), and Director of the Creative Writing Program (1995–97) at the University of Washington, where he has been on the faculty since 1984. He is a pioneer of Asian American studies. Wong received his undergraduate degree in English at the University of California at Berkeley (1971) and a master's degree in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University (1974).

Wong's first novel, Homebase, published by Reed and Cannon (1979), won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the 15th Annual Governor's Writers Day Award of Washington. His second novel, American Knees, first published by Simon & Schuster in 1996, was adapted into an independent feature film entitled Americanese (2010), written and directed by Eric Byler and produced by Lisa Onodera. The book was re-issued in 2005 by University of Washington Press.

Wong explained in an interview the title "American Knees": "When I was a child, kids used to come up to me and ask, 'What are you: Chinese, Japanese or Americanese?", while some asked if I was "Chinese, Japanese or dirty knees?"

"I never really knew what that meant when I was a kid," Wong says, "but I knew I didn't like it."

Wong is also co-editor of six multicultural literary anthologies including the pioneering anthology Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers (reprinted in four different editions), Literary Mosaic: Asian American and Asian Diasporas, Cultures, Identities, Representations, and The Big Aiiieeeee! He is co-editor of Before Columbus Foundation Fiction/Poetry Anthology: Selections from the American Book Awards, 1980-1990 – two volumes of contemporary American multicultural poetry and fiction.

Wong has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation residency in Italy. He was featured in the 1997 PBS documentary Shattering the Silences, and in the Bill Moyers' PBS documentary Becoming American: The Chinese Experience, in 2003. He is also featured in the 2005 documentary What's Wrong With Frank Chin?

Wong also serves as consulting and contributing editor for Transtext(e)s-Transcultures: A Journal of Global Cultural Studies.

Shawn Wong specializes in Creative Writing and Asian American studies. Since 1972, he has taught at several colleges and universities, including Mills College, University of California at Santa Cruz, San Francisco State University, and the University of Washington. He has also taught at the University of Tübingen (Germany), Jean Moulin University (Lyon), and at the University of Washington Rome Center (Italy).

He is on the faculty of the Red Badge Project, which teaches storytelling to veterans suffering from PTSD, depression, or anxiety disorders.