• Craft,  Creative Metanonfiction

    The Mitchellverse: A Primer on the Fiction of David Mitchell

    A Bloggy Introduction For many expatriate writers today, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein are still role models. And then there are the American MFA Programs, a host of which seem to be cranking out annual batches of Raymond Carver clones. Said one fresh-baked MFA clone from a prestigious fictioneering facility in Austin, Texas: “And they even taught me how to write the Raymond Carver story–it was required!” I can see his face now. A young Pakistani gentlemen who has a crush on Raymond Carver. Bushy black eyebrows, dark eyes, nerd glasses, the voice of a diplomat. Whenever we meet at the Bookworm café in Chengdu we talk shop, having forgotten…

  • Creative Metanonfiction,  Letters,  MFA

    Mistakes Were Probably Made

    As of this writing, 67 internationally recognized authors from around the world have petitioned to City University of Hong Kong to re-open its MFA Creative Writing Programme, the first of its kind in Asia, unique for its multicultural faculty and student body.   Although there is some circumstantial evidence that the CityU of HK MFA closure is politically motivated, I am beginning to believe the closure is primarily due to ill-informed decision making.  However, due to the utter lack of transparency in this matter, many possibilities currently co-exist.  It’s a Schrodinger’s Cat kind of thing.   Professor Hon S. Chan, an alumnus of the Maxwell School of Public Policy at…

  • Creative Metanonfiction,  Memoir,  MFA,  Satire

    A Report on the Ontological Status of Somebody’s Acting Head

    Subject: Update Concerning Somebody’s Acting Head Classification: Ultra Secret – For University MFA Eyes Only As none of you may know, I am a self-appointed detective investigating the current ongoing fiasco occurring in Hong Kong. But now I am depressed because I have discovered the truth about the Acting Head, my nemesis. My greatest fear was manifesting. Could I have been unwittingly wormholed into a Thomas Pynchon novel? When praying to the deities, Jesus, Peter Hessler, and Kim Kardashian didn’t work, I decided to take matters into my own hands and improvise a voodoo doll out of unwashed socks, a moldering potato, and my emergency sewing kit. Still nothing. Then…