Vanessa Hua

Hua was born to a Taiwanese American family. She graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in media studies.^[1] She then earned a Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside in 2009.^[1]

She is the author of Deceit and Other Possibilities (2020) and A River of Stars (2018) and the novel, Forbidden City (2022). She is a member of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto.

Hua has worked as a journalist at the Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, San Francisco Examiner, and the San Francisco Chronicle.^[1][2] Hua was a weekly columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 2016 to 2023.^[2]

Hua has taught at Warren Wilson College's master of fine arts (MFA) program.^[1]

She received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship award in 2020.^[3]

Hua is married and has two sons.^[2]

• 2020 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship^[3]
• 2017 Dr. Suzanne Ahn Award for Civil Rights and Social Justice Reporting^[4]
• 2017 Finalist, California Book Award^[5]
• 2016-17 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature^[6]
• 2015 Rona Jaffe Writers' Award^[7]
• Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing^[8]
• San Francisco Foundation's James D. Phelan Award for fiction^[9]

• Deceit and Other Possibilities (Willow Publishing 2016) ISBN 978-0997199628
• A River of Stars (Ballantine Books August 2018) ISBN 978-0399178788, a novel about San Francisco Chinatown
• Forbidden City (Ballantine Books May 2022) ISBN 978-0-399-17881-8, a novel about a young mistress of Mao Zedong^[10]