Shawna Yang Ryan

Shawna Yang Ryan is a Taiwanese American novelist, short story writer and creative writing professor, who has published the novels Water Ghosts and Green Island (2016). She taught in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Background Ryan was born in Sacramento, California, and was the mixed-race or Hapa child of parents who met during the Vietnam War: her mother was born in Taiwan and the daughter of Chinese immigrants who fled the mainland in 1949 with Chiang Kai-shek, and her European father grew up all around Europe and America, eventually meeting her mother while stationed in Taiwan.

Ryan graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her bachelor's degree, and also received a Master of Arts (M.A.) degree in Creative Writing from the University of California, Davis. Ryan was also a former Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan during 2002. Previously, she lived in Honolulu, Hawaii and taught in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. The novel ended up becoming a San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller, the 2006 winner of the Maurice Prize, a finalist for the 2008 Northern California Book Award, and longlisted for the 2010 Asian American Literary Award. Booklist also called the novel "accomplished and affecting," while The Boston Globe stated that Ryan was "a writer to watch." To write the novel, Ryan performed extensive research while traveling Taiwan and reviewing older archive material in print and online, stating in an interview with The New York Times: "I often thought of my research as similar to unraveling a sweater — I’d tug at one thread, and a whole sleeve would come undone — one interviewee would introduce me to another, who’d introduce me to another, and so on. I lived in Taipei for a few years and traveled all over the island. I watched films and found old home movies and commercials in the archives and on YouTube. I bought music, vintage picture books and travelogues. I sifted and sifted until I felt I had a handle on the material world I was trying to depict." The book received positive reviews from Booklist (starred review) ("[An] engrossing epic...bsorbing and affecting, this powerful tale explores the bond between a father and daughter, the compromises they are forced to make, and the prices they pay in their quest for freedom") and Kirkus Reviews ("Epic...The narrative works movingly on many different levels but especially on the personal and the political"). "Green Island" was also blurbed by, Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer.

The novel tells the story of a Taiwanese family known as the Tsais, who survive the February 28 incident of 1947 and are forced to live through the tumultuous decades that follow as Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (or Nationalist Party), begins its martial law rule of the island. The 228 incident marks the start of a massacre overseen by Kuomintang soldiers from mainland China, where 10,000 to 30,000 Taiwanese citizens were murdered due to protesting the rule of the KMT.

Short fiction Ryan's short stories have appeared in ZYZZYVA ("The Abandoned Elders"), Swill Magazine ("Failure to Commit"), Asian American Literary Review ("The End of February", a text piece accompanying an oil and canvas painting done by Sean Kim known as "Untitled", and "Marginalia"), Kartika Review ("Driving Home"), and the Berkeley Fiction Review ("Rime of The Sweaty Girl"). The short story entitled "Marginalia" that Ryan published in the Fall 2013 issue of The Asian American Literary Review was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Awards

Literary awards Year Work Award Category Result Ref 2006 Water Ghosts Maurice Prize — 2008 Northern California Book Award — 2010 Asian American Literary Award — 2015 — Elliot Cades Emerging Writer Award — 2016 Green Island Goodreads Choice Award Historical Fiction 2017 American Book Award — 2018 AAAS Book Award Creative Writing

Additional distinction Green Island (2016) (Knopf) Amazon Best of 2016—so far Amazon Best Book of the Month, February 2016 IndieBound Indie Next Pick, March 2016 Penguin Random House International One World One Book selection The Straits Times Bestseller The Boston Globe Pick of the week Water Ghosts (2009) (Penguin Press) San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller First published as Locke 1928 (2007) by El Leon Literary Arts (Berkeley, CA)