Shawna Yang Ryan was born and raised in
California. Her experience as a mixed-race Asian American, and her years in her
mother's country of origin, Taiwan—including one year as a Fulbright
Scholar—have influenced the major themes of her work: Chinese culture in the
context of diaspora, the definition of “foreign,” and the formation of cultural
and national identities.
As a graduate student in the Creative Writing
program at the University of California, Davis, Ryan spent a summer in the
Sacramento Delta—in the tiny Chinese immigrant community of Locke—researching
her master's thesis, a novel. First published in 2007 by El Leon Literary Arts
under the title Locke 1928, it was re-issued by The Penguin Press as Water Ghosts in 2009. It was a San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller,
the 2006 winner of the UC Davis Maurice Prize, a finalist for the 2008 Northern
California Book Award, and long-listed for the 2010 Asian American Literary
Award. Booklist called Water
Ghosts “accomplished and
affecting,” while The Boston
Globe has declared her “a writer
to watch.”
Ryan is also intimately involved in the Taiwanese
American community. She served as the Press Secretary for the Taiwanese
American Federation of Northern California, and has spoken nationally at
community events and student workshops about Taiwanese history and identity
formation. In 2010, TaiwaneseAmerican.org named her as one of the Taiwanese
American community's “100 Passionate People.”
Her short fiction has appeared in ZYZZYVA, The Asian American Literary Review,
Kartika Review, and The Berkeley Fiction Review.
