Superb and inimitable Chinese American writer David Wong Louie passed away
Superb and inimitable Chinese American writer David Wong Louie passed away September 19th at 2:45 pm. An expanded edition of PANGS OF LOVE (with Foreword by Viet Thanh Nguyen) is forthcoming from University of Washington Press.
According to the letter from Lowell Gallagher, Professor and Chair of Department of English UCLA:
“With a heavy heart, I share the news of David Wong Louie’s passing. After a long illness with cancer, David passed away Wednesday afternoon, September 19, at home with family at his side.
David joined the UCLA faculty in 1992, and in the intervening years David’s novels, short fiction, and essays garnered for him a sterling reputation as a powerfully eloquent voice in the literary world. His personal essay “Eat, Memory,” first published in Harper’s Magazine, was selected for The Best American Essays 2018. An expanded edition of his short story volume Pangs of Love, which will include “Eat, Memory” and the short story “Cold Hearted,” as well as a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and an Afterword by King-Kok Cheung, is forthcoming from University of Washington Press, 2019. Pangs of Love won the Los Angeles Times Book Review First Fiction Award, the Ploughshares First Fiction Book Award and was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 1991 and a Voice Literary Supplement Favorite of 1991. His novel The Barbarians Are Coming (2000) won the Association for Asian American Studies Prose Award in 2002. He was also awarded a Lannan Writing Fellowship in 2001. He co-edited Dissident Song: A Contemporary Asian American Anthology (1985) with Marilyn Chin.
Many of you, I know, remember David’s brilliance as a teacher and his extraordinary generosity as a colleague, not to mention his abiding sense of humor, disarming wit, and, in recent years, inspiring resilience. “
As lifelong time friend and UCLA colleague of David Wong Louie, Prof. King-kok Cheung said: ”Despite the physical ravages DWL is still every inch DWL inside, with all his charm and inner beauty intact. I admire his courage to persevere and to hang on to his lovely self so fully.”
David Wong Louie (Chinese: 雷祖威; pinyin: Léi Zǔwēi; born 1954) is an Asian American novelist and short story writer.
Pangs of Love received the 1991 First Fiction Award from the Los Angeles Times and the John C. Zacharis First Book Awardfrom Ploughshares.[2] It was also named a Notable Book by The New York Times and a Voice Literary Supplement Favorite. The Barbarians are Coming won the Shirley Collier Prize.
In 2001, he was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He has also had a fellowship with the National Foundation for the Advancement of Arts.
His short story “Displacement” was included in 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt October 6, 2015
