Visiting Writer Peter Ho Davies, Thursday, February 2

Peter Ho Davies

Peter Ho Davies, author most recently of the novel The Fortunes, visits George Mason University on Thursday, February 2, for an afternoon workshop with MFA students and a public reading at 7:30 p.m. in Merten Hall, Room 1203, on Mason’s Fairfax Campus.

The Fortunes, released in Fall 2016, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the year, one of National Public Radio’s "Best Books of 2016,” a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016, an Indie Next Pick, and one of the Washington Independent Review of Books“25 Favorite Books of 2016.” NPR noted that “Davies writes with a rare emotional resonance and a deft sense of structure; it's hard not to be in awe of the way he's composed this complex, beautiful novel. The Fortunes is a stunning look at what it means to be Chinese, what it means to be American, and what it means to be a person navigating the strands of identity, the things that made us who we are, whoever that is.”

Davies’ other novel, The Welsh Girl, was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and he has written two short story collections, The Ugliest House in the World(winner of the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize) and Equal Love (A New York Times Notable Book). His work has appeared in HarpersThe AtlanticThe Paris ReviewThe Guardian and Washington Post among others, and has been widely anthologized, including selections for Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. In 2003 Granta magazine named him among its Best of Young British Novelists. He has also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he won the PEN/Malamud Award.

Born in Britain to Welsh and Chinese parents, Davies now makes his home in the US. He has taught at the University of Oregon and Emory University, and is currently on the faculty of the Helen Zell MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

And mark your calendars now for other visiting writers coming this spring:

  • Beverly Lowry (nonfiction), Thursday, February 16
  • Suzanne Buffam (poetry), Thursday, March 2
  • Laura van den Berg (fiction), Monday, April 3
  • Mike Scalise (nonfiction), Tuesday, April 4
  • Spencer Reece (poetry), Thursday, April 6