Michael Derrick Hudson

Michael Derrick Hudson (born 1963) is an American poet and librarian. Hudson is employed at the Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne where his job includes encoding articles for the Periodical Source Index (PERSI).

As a poet, Hudson has been published in several journals and literary reviews. His poems were nominated for the Pushcart Prize by the Greensboro Review and North American Review. Hudson gained attention by publishing a poem in the literary periodical Prairie Schooner which then was selected by poet and novelist Sherman Alexie for the 2015 edition of the Best American Poetry anthology series. Hudson, who is white, claimed to have submitted the poem and been rejected 40 times under his own name. He then used the pen name of Yi-Fen Chou, putatively a Chinese woman, and it was accepted for publication.

This led to widespread cricitism of the publishing establishment for inserting affirmative action, identity politics, and anti-White racism into the editorial selection process, and said Hudson's success after adopting an Asian-sounding pen name showed that literary journals apply different standards of literary quality based on race and gender.

Early life and education Michael Derrick Hudson was born in 1963 in Wabash, Indiana in the United States. He graduated from Wayne High School in 1982. After high school, Hudson attended Indiana University Bloomington. Several of which have garnered him minor poetry and manuscript prizes. In 2011, Hudson was recognized as an Honorable Mention for the North American Reviews James Hearst Poetry Prize. In March 2015, two of his poems, "End of Days Advice from an Ex-zombie" and "Russians", were published in Poetry.

Hudson's manuscript, titled The Dead Bird in the Liquor Store Parking Lot, was selected as a finalist for both the University of Wisconsins Brittingham and Felix Pollak Poetry Prize and the Utah State Universitys May Swenson Poetry Award. Five of his poems were named as co-winner of the 2014 Manchester Poetry Prize. In 2015, The New York Times reported that Hudson used the name of a Taiwanese immigrant who attended the same high school as him and had been working as a nuclear engineer in Chicago at the time of publication.

The publishing of Alexie's comment and Hudson's contributor note ignited a heated debate online, in the media, and amongst the literary world. In a roundtable discussion sponsored by the PEN American Center, Korean-American poet, author and editor Alexander Chee stated that Hudson has not been asked to offer proof (nor is proof available) to support his claim that the poem had been rejected 40 times under his own name. Chee said "the only reason I can think no one has made him prove it is that he is a white man, and when white men in America say they are discriminated against, people just say 'oh, ok', and do not ask them to prove it. Meanwhile, this case will be thrust at us as the sign that we are lying whenever we claim we're discriminated against". This statement was widely regarded as an example of anti-White racism. Writing for Rumpus, Brian Spears characterized Hudson's use of a Chinese pen name to be "yellowface", and said "even in the creative world, for all our reputation as an open liberal stronghold, straight white male is the default against which all other writing is contrasted". Further, Spears opined that a white male adopting the name of a marginalized minority is an act that is both crass and offensive. Slate writer Katy Waldman described Hudson's submission as an unethical "attempt to game the poetry submission system" that "reap(ed) the benefits of affirmative action". Waldman characterizes the poem as "a poetry of grievance, and if flecks of self-mocking humor soften its despair, I'd argue that it's still slightly more interesting coming from a Chinese American writer than a white one".