Growing up in the 1920s in a Taiwanese farming village, Grandma was destined to work in the rice fields for life. When I was four and started to learn Chinese phonetic symbols, Grandma asked me to tutor her. I taught her everything I knew. After a hard day’s work, she slouched over her antique Singer […]
It is odd to say that I decided to be a poet because I was born with two different colored legs: one dark, one light. But this birthmark became my lure to language, and later the very soul of my identity. When I was old enough to understand that I was different, I became aware […]
When I was growing up, reading gave me access to faraway worlds, intriguing characters and suspenseful plots. Today, writing does. As a journalist, I’ve peered into subcultures, met brilliant minds and collected casts of characters that could fill volumes. I’ve learned about the strange world of worm farm schemes; met with a hit man hired […]
Writers tend to worry a lot about when to call themselves writers. For me, it’s been a no-brainer. Writers write. I knew I was a writer when I was eight years old. A teacher called me a writer a couple of years later, sealing the deal. I’ve never been one of those people who can […]
I first started writing because I thought the pictures in my coloring books needed stories to go with them. I’d write in the margins with the crayons that were too boring to color with, like Burnt Umber and Neutral Grey. I became a life-long story-writing addict. I wrote plays for my friends to put on […]
Thomas Berger said, “Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.” I’ve always been an avid reader and was brought up on the classics of childhood and adolescent literature, and I grew up as a child in the 1960/70’s Golden Age of escapism television; so it’s no wonder I started acting out, and then writing […]
Writing is something I’ve done off and on all of my life, however, it was much later as an adult, when I finally decided to share my struggles via writing, that I truly became a writer and finished and published a book. Writing is cathartic for me— it allows me to “drain” my mind of thoughts that […]
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