The Transpacific Flow: Creative Writing Programs in China

What happens when a US cultural institution is imported to China, the purported chief rival of the United States in the twenty-first century? The first book-length account of university-based creative writing programs in China, this book reveals how Chinese intellectuals adapt American-style writing programs such as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the International Writing Program at Chinese universities to seek agency and literary innovation in the last two decades. The rise of creative writing programs in China explains broader issues of cultural production in an increasingly authoritarian and market-oriented postsocialist state. By telling a unique story of Chinese intellectuals’ interactions with an influential Western cultural institution, this book also shows how varied cultural and geopolitical priorities can rewrite the story of the global influence of the United States.

Jin Feng 冯进 is Professor of Chinese and Japanese and the Orville and Mary Patterson Routt Professor of Literature at Grinnell College, USA. She has published four English monographs: The New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction (Purdue University Press, 2004), The Making of a Family Saga (SUNY Press, 2009), Romancing the Internet (Brill, 2013), and Tasting Paradise on Earth (University of Washington Press, 2019), three Chinese books such as A Book for Foodies 吃货之书 (Jiangsu Fenghuang Wenyi, 2020), and numerous articles in both English and Chinese.