Ye Chun Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Poetry Books

Ye Chun is a Chinese-American literary translator and writer.

Ye was born in China in Luoyang and in 1999 moved to the United States. She attended the University of Virginia, where she graduated with her MFA. She also attended the University of Missouri and graduated with her PhD in literature and creative writing.

Today she teaches at Providence College.

Her Chinese novel Peach Tree in the Sea came out in 2011 from People’s Literature Publishing House. She has also done some translation work, translating writing done by Yang Jian, Hai Zi, Li-Young Lee, and Galway Kinnell.

Her translations collection, Ripened Wheat: Selected Poems by Hai Zi made the shortlist for a 2016 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Award. She also received the 2011 Berkshire Prize for her poetry book Lantern Puzzle. She also has another poetry book, Travel Over Water.

In 2016 she received an NEA fellowship and she also received a Pushcart Prize for “The Luoyang Poem” in 2017. In 2018, she won another Pushcart Prize for her story “Milk”. Chun would win yet another Pushcart Prize for her story “Hao” in 2020.

A collection of stories titled Hao came out in 2021 and was published by Catapult. It made the longlist for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in fiction. It was also picked as a favorite book of the year by Lithub. It was also a New York Public Library Best Book of 2021. It also made it into Electric Lit’s Favorite Short Story Collection of the Year.

Ye Chun also had a debut novel in English titled Straw Dogs of the Universe. It came out in 2023 and made the longlist for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in fiction. It was also named as a notable work of the year by the Washington Post.

She is bilingual. Her translations include Ripened Wheat, Long River, Behind My Eyes Undressing, and The Book of Nightmares. Ye Chun resides in Providence, Rhode Island. She has also received a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award.

Lantern Puzzle is a poetry book by Ye Chun. If you love poetry or appreciate writing that expresses the Asian-American experience, get a copy of this book and see what you think! It won the Berkshire Prize for First or Second Book.

This is a book of self-translation, where each of the poems has gone through a process of being transformed. Ye Chun moves between the English that she has adopted and her native Chinese in the pursuit of condensing, distilling, and expanding how one sees and understands.

Straw Dogs of the Universe: A Puzzle is a 2023 book from Ye Chun. It made the longlist for the Andrew Carnegie Medals of Excellence. It is also the winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize as well as the winner of the Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Award. This is an immigrant story that is a perfect fit for those who have read and enjoyed Pachinko.

A young daughter of a Chinese railroad worker and her father have been sold into servitude in this story set in the nineteenth century of California as they look for not only a family but a fulfillment as well as a way to belong in a new land full of violence.

This is a historical novel that is set in the American West. It is told from the point of view of the immigrants who built it, a perspective that is infrequently showcased. It tells the story of a Chinese father and his daughter, who wants nothing more than to find him no matter what.

When her village is pulled apart by famine, Sixiang finds that her fate has taken a turn. She is just ten years old but has now been sold to a human trafficker. The exchange has cost only a bag of rice as well as six silver coins.

Her mother does not want to let her go. However, she knows that her daughter might have a better life where she is going. The United States is sure to be somewhere that she can do better. They’ve come to America and now Sixiang is there with the profits made off of her own sale as well as a single photo of her father Guifeng.

Now she must make her way across the landscape of America, a place that she does not know, so that she can hopefully reunite her family once more and make a new life for herself. She does not know what awaits her, but she is going to do her best to try and take it on and see how it goes. Besides, she doesn’t have much of a choice.

As Sixiang goes through a new world that is far from forgiving, her father is also out there in California working on the railroad. He has attempted to make a new and better life for himself but his efforts have also been counteracted by his long lost love as well as the American West’s violence, which seems difficult to escape at the moment.

This is a generational story that makes its way from Chinese villages all the way to the railroad and the anti-Chinese movement that takes place in California. This is about courage in a new land, the history of immigrants building the railroad, the strength of family and the experience of being rejected by a country while you are trying to help build it. Pick up Straw Dogs of the Universe by Ye Chun to go on this (fictional) journey into the past that is based on the real life events in America.