Author: Xu Xi 許素細

I used to live in Singapore. In ’94, just before my first book was released, a corporation moved me to this tropical, island city-state. It still feels like home whenever I fly into Changi at the eastern end of the island. Prison neighborhood. The street where I lived. My house was quite unbelievably beautiful, according…

Shades of pink at Café Gray’s bar where I met the omnipresent Nigel Collett for drinks. Nigel fits comfortably into my lit, lit life. For one thing, we’re contemporaries. As much as I love writing “this younger writer,” as I did last blog, it’s reassuring to bump into others on this same journey who actually remember…

And then you say you will / And then you won’t . . . “Undecided” (1938) by Sid Robin & Charlie Shavers About itineraries, here’s Robin Hemley’s: He was going to stopover in Hong Kong, and then he wasn’t, and then he was, wasn’t, and finally did because a typhoon swirled in Manila and his…

32 years. That’s how long it’s been since I last set foot on Australia’s east coast. Byron Bay was a soft landing after the long absence, because here was a surfer’s paradise, a gourmet’s paradise, a wine aficionado’s paradise . . . okay, okay so waxing overly lyrical etc., but honestly, you’ll wish you were…

When you’re around the world’s literati, you’re usually a little lit. A bit inebriated. Slightly slurred. Deliciously drunk. Oh, on words of course (Mais oui! What else?). Or if you’re running an international, low-residency MFA with Asian characteristics, you’re intoxicated in multiple Englishes and other languages. Let’s talk about that lit life (and being lit)….