PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award-winning Author Michael X. Wang
Michael X. Wang is the 2020 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize-Winnter for his debut short story collection Further News of Defeat. His debut novel, Lost in the Long March, is forthcoming from Abrams Books/Overlook Press. He was born in Fenyang, a small coal-mining city in China’s mountainous Shanxi Province. Michael immigrated to the United States when he was six and has lived in ten states and fifteen cities. In 2010, he completed his PhD in Literature at Florida State University. Before that, he received his MFA in Fiction at Purdue. Michael’s work has appeared in New England Review, Greensboro Review, Day One, and Juked, among others, and they have won an AWP Intro Award and been selected by the Best American Anthology as a notable story of the year. He lives with his wife and pets at Russellville, Arkansas, and is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Arkansas Tech University.
How did you first get interested in writing and what do you feel the medium of book writing affords writers that other forms of writing cannot accomplish?
Like many other authors I know, I’ve been writing for as long I can remember. When I was a kid, I wrote cheesy ghost stories and science fiction, based loosely on whatever I was reading or watching at the time: Star Trek, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert. It wasn’t until college and the encouragement of my early teachers that I started thinking about writing as a career. It was also at that time that I realized how different novels and stories were as an art form, when compared to music, movies, or painting. Books require more from their audience, than those other mediums. Writing requires the reader to be active—to use their imagination to fill in the blank. With visual media, much of that work is already done by the director, actor, or cinematographer.
“There will always be a place for the written word.”
But with this additional work comes additional rewards. I don’t believe any other medium is better-suited at conveying the hidden life of people than books. In this world, we can never know someone in life truly and fully. That is, we’re never privileged to someone’s inner thoughts, yearnings, turmoil, etc., but books are one of the only places where we can get to know a character’s life fully, and because of this fact, books will always be special. There will always be a place for the written word.
Michael X. Wang’s Lost in the Long March (Abrams)
What is your creative process like? Any special rituals or practices?
I’ve moved around a lot in the last decade, and my process always seems to be changing. Sometimes, I would go through weeks where I’d write two thousand words every day. Other times, the writing seems to come in slow drips through a tightly-screwed faucet. The writer Richard Bausch said that you shouldn’t judge yourself on how much you’ve written or the quality of your writing on any given day, but whether or not you sat down honestly to work.
Given all of the above, I have found that most of the words that come out of me, come out in the last hour or so of any writing period, and that usually coincides with lunch or dinner time—in other words, when I’m hungry. I think there might be something there psychologically: I feel I tend to be less self-critical and just let the writing come out, because I’m thinking about how hungry I am physically and less worried about all the things that might be wrong with the sentences. So, now I tend to eat very light—if at all—before I begin writing, in the hopes that I can reach this state faster.
“…shedding light on the historical context, something…many Asian American authors don’t pay enough attention to.”
Your forthcoming and highly-esteemed novel Lost in the Long March echoes the works of Min Jin Lee's Pachinko, Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master’s Son and Ha Jin's War Trash. How have these novelists helped in inspiring your writing?
I’m of the firm belief that Ha Jin’s writing paved the way for my generation of Asian American writers. He differs from the likes of Maxine Hong Kingston or Gus Lee, in both theme and tone. Early Asian American authors wrote for an audience that were largely unaware of Asian culture, so they could use tropes like luck, martial arts, and overbearing parents, and their work would still feel fresh. Their tone, in general, was one of combative indignation: How could America treat immigrants so badly? Ha Jin was different. Since he grew up in China and immigrated to the United States in his mid-thirties, his early writing largely focused on the home country, shedding light on the historical context, something that I feel many Asian American authors don’t pay enough attention to. He also writes very plainly and infuses a lightheartedness to his landscape that makes the poignant moments even more touching.
All three novels you mentioned—Pachinko, The Orphan Master’s Son, and War Trash—explores the notion of family and how it changes during wartime. Lee’s Pachinko was inspiring in its scope, Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son shocked me in its detailed portrayal of life under a horrible regime, and War Trash sheds light on the mindset of Chinese soldiers during the Korean War. Since the events of Lost in the Long March take place only a couple decades earlier, I found Jin’s novel useful in getting into the heads of the main characters: Ping, Yong, and Haiwu.
“…it was making sure that my writing was rooted in my Asian-American identity, which, until that point, was something that I had been running away from.”
Arkansas Tech University where Michael X. Wang is a professor of English.
Did your background in obtaining your MFA and PhD help to inform much of your writing? How has your Asian-American identity figured into your work?
The writing journey is different for everyone, and some great writers don’t have or need an MFA (or any degree at all). For me, though, I can safely say that I wouldn’t be the writer I am today if I didn’t do my MFA. I would probably still be in a state of frustration, writing stories that weren’t quite up-to-par and wondering what I was doing wrong. I might eventually figure things out and get published, but what an MFA does is it saves you time: years or even decades. You get the benefit of different perspectives—perspectives you respect and cherish. You obtain a frame of mind that allows you to read your writing critically from the point of view of readers. You realize what you should and need to be writing. In my case, it was making sure that my writing was rooted in my Asian-American identity, which, until that point, was something that I had been running away from. An MFA also gives you the opportunity to make lifelong connections with mentors and other aspiring writers who all play a crucial part in making sure that writing will be a part of your identity forever. In short, an MFA shows you who you are as a writer—your voice, style, perspective—and that’s something difficult to see when you’re on your own.
As for a PhD in creative writing, I don’t think it’s necessary, if all you want to do is write. For me, I decided to pursue a PhD because I discovered at Purdue that I really enjoyed teaching, along with writing. Getting a position in academia, especially one in creative writing, is highly-competitive, and it’s becoming increasingly common that more and more assistant professorships require, or prefer, a PhD. So that was the reason I chose to continue my education—that, and it gave me more time to work on my novel. I wrote the first draft of Lost in the Long March during my last year at Florida State.
What has it been like for you in working with Tracy Carns and the team at Overlook/Abrams in readying your novel Lost in the Long March for publication?
Our collaboration has just started, and I’m very excited to be working with Tracy and getting down to the nuts-and-bolts of the editing process. She has been wonderfully supportive so far. I love the look and feel of books published by The Overlook Press and Abrams, and I can’t wait to see what the team does with Lost in the Long March!
Luding Bridge, the location of the Battle of Luding Bridge, one of the most important events in the Long March.
“…I hope readers take away a fuller perspective of Chinese history in the last century and not simply reduce a nation down to one or two events.”
The Cultural Revolution in China is a central part of your novel Lost in the Long March. That major event not only remade China and parts of Asia but also the rest of the world. How has the Cultural Revolution had reverberations in today’s politics and current affairs?
There has been a number of books on the Cultural Revolution, itself (Yiyun Li’s The Vagrants and Ha Jin’s Waiting come to mind), but Lost in the Long March covers the history leading up to that event. Western readers are familiar with the atrocities and human rights violations often associated with the Cultural Revolution, but if they don’t have the historical context surrounding it, they would never fully understand what was going on and what led to it. It’s kind of like if someone in China only read about the Ku Klux Klan and all the horrific things that it did and knew nothing else about American history. It would color that person’s perception of America. They would think: Wow, what a horrible country! How can any nation in the world let something like that happen? How can any country allow such an organization to exist? The same is true for the Cultural Revolution, except the scale is much greater. Your average Western reader learns about that part of Chinese history and instantly makes the connection that China is a backwards and barbaric country—perhaps they even feel lucky to be born in the West—yet they know next to nothing about what happened before and after the event. I’m not saying it’s not important to bring events like the Cultural Revolution to light—on the contrary, it’s crucial that the world knows about them so they don’t happen again—but they also shouldn’t be what defines a country either. With Lost in the Long March, I hope readers take away a fuller perspective of Chinese history in the last century and not simply reduce a nation down to one or two events.
2020 was a difficult year for everyone and book publishing was no exception. What was it like winning the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award for debut fiction that year?
Like everyone else, I’ve stayed mostly indoors for 2020, feeling a bit dejected and shellshocked. I didn’t get to see my students as much as I wanted to, and creative writing workshops were odd because they were all online. I felt bad for the students whose works we discussed that year, since discussions weren’t as animated as I wanted them to be, and I was afraid students would interpret the silences of web meetings as people not liking their stories. I also missed out on the opportunity to do a book tour, and I was constantly worried about my family in China. My grandparents in Fenyang suffered back-to-back strokes, and my grandfather, who had raised me for many years, passed away shortly after. I tried writing about the event in a piece called “Watching My Grandfather’s Funeral Over WeChat,” but it was too emotional and I didn’t have enough distance.
Still, there came the occasional trickle of good news as well. In December, I learned that Further News of Defeat was longlisted for the PEN/Bingham Prize, and I thought, Oh, how nice. Then, in February, I found out it made the shortlist, and the news exceeded all my expectations. Actually winning it was a total surprise. I feel so fortunate, because the collections of all the finalists were incredibly strong, and it must’ve been a hard decision for the judges.
“Based on the Chinese zodiac, 2020 was the year of the rat...it was what we would call a Ben Ming Nian, or a year in which another cycle…of your life was over and a new one was about to start.”
Years from now, I think I’ll look back on 2020 and 2021 with very mixed emotions. Based on the Chinese zodiac, 2020 was the year of the rat, and since I’d been born during another rat year, it was what we would call a Ben Ming Nian, or a year in which another cycle (twelve-year period) of your life was over and a new one was about to start. According to superstition, those years are the ones in which big events happen—sometimes good, sometimes bad. 2020 was a little bit of both for me.
Are there any interesting books on your nightstand at the moment?
I just read Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and loved it. Currently, I’m also reading everything by Charles Yu: Interior Chinatown, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and Third Class Superhero. Forever on my nightstand are the works of Anton Chekhov, Ha Jin, William Trevor, Dan Chaon, and Steven Millhauser.
Any advice for hopeful writers looking to become published authors?
Of course, the path to publishing is different for every author, and the following advice will be true for only fiction—novels and story collections—since nonfiction is an entirely different beast, altogether. And this might sound a bit obvious, as well, but I would say the most important thing is just writing great literature and then getting noticed. It’s OK to have your first few stories be published in small or up-and-coming journals; it might even be better to do so. Literary agents read those journals and actively query authors whose work they enjoy. The first few manuscript requests I got, I received this way. If you combine publishing stories with querying other literary agents who you believe are a good fit, you’ll probably be able to publish your book in no time. I say this all with the caveat that the writing, itself, is good.
“If the novel, itself, is not at a certain standard, I would work on your craft first.”
If the novel, itself, is not at a certain standard, I would work on your craft first. Join writing groups. Find readers whose opinions you trust. Be open-minded to criticism. And try not to get discouraged. Or—better yet—use that discouragement to fuel you. You have to keep in mind that most readers don’t want to discourage you. They want writing to work. What they want to say the most is, “I found your novel compelling, insightful, and poignant, and I couldn’t put it down!” And if they’re not saying that, then, most likely, the work needs more revision. You might need some time away from it. Take a week, a month, or even a year. Write something else. Come back to it with fresh eyes, and if it’s a story that you can’t not tell, you’ll finish it, and it’ll be better for it.
Can you tell us what you are thinking of writing next?
I’m sort of an eclectic writer, so I always try to have a couple of things in the works. At the moment, the project I’m most passionate about is a genre-bending science-fiction novel that explores the themes of consciousness, immigration, environmentalism, and video game culture. It’s tentatively titled The Red Synthetic Utopia of the Mind, and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever written before. Besides that, I’ve also outlined a historical novel set during the Southern Song Dynasty, when the Mongols invaded. It’s loosely-based on an ancient Chinese legend, and it involves concubines, courtroom intrigue, and karmic retribution. I’m very excited to begin writing it as soon as I have a full draft of Red Synthetic Utopia, which—fingers crossed—should be close at hand!
Can you finish this sentence? I love reading and writing because…
I love reading and writing because it answers questions about our world that other art forms, science, or professions can’t. It teaches, through experience, without you having to actually live through those experiences. It travels back and forth in time—to pasts and futures, both real and imagined. It deep-dives into our perception, morality, and consciousness—all through an indirectness that makes those complex issues digestible. It is honest in a way that only literature can be. It offers truth in all its intricacies.