Shawn Wong

Shawn Hsu Wong
Born	1949 Oakland, California
Occupation	Writer, editor, professor
Notable works	Aiiieeeee!

Shawn Hsu Wong (born 1949) is a Chinese American author and scholar. He has served as the Professor of English, Director of the University Honors Program (2003–06), Chair of the Department of English (1997–2002), and Director of the Creative Writing Program (1995–97) at the University of Washington, where he has been on the faculty since 1984. He is a pioneer of Asian American studies. Wong received his undergraduate degree in English at the University of California at Berkeley (1971) and a master's degree in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University (1974).

Wong's first novel, Homebase, published by Reed and Cannon (1979), won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the 15th Annual Governor's Writers Day Award of Washington. His second novel, American Knees, first published by Simon & Schuster in 1996, was adapted into an independent feature film entitled Americanese (2010), written and directed by Eric Byler and produced by Lisa Onodera. The book was re-issued in 2005 by University of Washington Press.

Wong explained in an interview the title "American Knees": "When I was a child, kids used to come up to me and ask, 'What are you: Chinese, Japanese or Americanese?", while some asked if I was "Chinese, Japanese or dirty knees?"

"I never really knew what that meant when I was a kid," Wong says, "but I knew I didn't like it."

Wong is also co-editor of six multicultural literary anthologies including the pioneering anthology Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers (reprinted in four different editions), Literary Mosaic: Asian American and Asian Diasporas, Cultures, Identities, Representations, and The Big Aiiieeeee!. He is co-editor of Before Columbus Foundation Fiction/Poetry Anthology: Selections from the American Book Awards, 1980-1990 – two volumes of contemporary American multicultural poetry and fiction.

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