View source for Ha Jin

{{short description|Chinese-American writer}}
{{redirect|Jin Xuefei|the Chinese alpine skier|Jin Xuefei (alpine skier)}}
{{about|the Chinese American poet|the American actor|Jin Ha}}
{{Infobox writer
| name             = Ha Jin<br/>{{lang|zh|哈金}}
| image            = Ha jin 8693.jpg
| pseudonym        = Ha Jin
| birth_date       = {{Birth date and age|1956|2|21}}
| birth_place      = [[Liaoning]], China
| occupation       = {{flatlist|
* Poet
* novelist
* teacher}}
| nationality      = American
| education        = [[Heilongjiang University]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]])<br>[[Shandong University]] ([[Master of Arts|MA]])<br>[[Brandeis University]] ([[Doctor of Philosophy|PhD]])
| genre            = Poetry, [[short story]], novel, essay
| subjects         = China
| movement         = 
| notableworks     = {{collapsible list
  |titlestyle = 
  |title =
  |liststyle = 
  |''[[The Boat Rocker]]''|''[[Waiting (novel)|Waiting]]''|''[[In the Pond]]''|''[[War Trash]]''|''[[Ocean of Words]]''|''[[The Bridegroom (short story collection)|The Bridegroom]]''}}
| awards           = {{collapsible list
  |titlestyle = 
  |title =
  |liststyle = 
  |[[Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction]] (1996)|[[Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award]] (1997)|[[Guggenheim Fellowship]] (1999)|[[National Book Award]] (1999)|[[PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction|PEN/Faulkner Award]] (2000)|Asian Fellowship (2000–2002)|Townsend Prize for Fiction (2002)|[[PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction|PEN/Faulkner Award]] (2005)|[[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] (2006)|[[Dayton Literary Peace Prize]], runner-up, Nanjing Requiem (2012)}}
| signature        = Ha Jin Signature.png
| spouse           = Lisha Bian
}}
{{Chinese
| order = st
| c = {{linktext|哈|金}}
| p = Hā Jīn
| altname = Jin Xuefei
| s2 = {{linktext|金|雪|飞}}
| t2 = {{linktext|金|雪|飛}}
| p2 = Jīn Xuěfēi
}}
'''Jin Xuefei''' ({{zh|s={{lang|zh|金雪飞}}|t={{lang|zh|金雪飛}}|p=Jīn Xuěfēi}}; born February 21, 1956) is a [[Chinese Americans|Chinese American]] poet and novelist who uses the pen name '''Ha Jin''' ({{zh|c={{lang|zh|哈金}}|labels=no}}). The name ''Ha'' comes from his favorite city, [[Harbin]]. His poetry is associated with the [[Misty Poets|Misty Poetry]] movement.<ref>[http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5663 A Brief Guide to Misty Poets] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100412152855/http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5663 |date=2010-04-12 }}</ref>

==Early life, education, and immigration==
Ha Jin was born in [[Liaoning]], China. His father was a military officer; at thirteen, Jin joined the [[People's Liberation Army]] during the [[Cultural Revolution]]. Jin began to educate himself in Chinese literature and high school curriculum at sixteen. He left the army when he was nineteen<ref>[http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-jin-ha.asp "Ha Jin"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100131063328/http://bookreporter.com/authors/au-jin-ha.asp |date=2010-01-31 }}. ''Bookreporter''.</ref> as he entered [[Heilongjiang University]], later earning a [[bachelor's degree]] in English studies. This was followed by a [[master's degree]] in Anglo-American literature at [[Shandong University]].

Jin grew up in the chaos of early communist China. He was on a scholarship at [[Brandeis University]] when the [[1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre]] occurred. The Chinese government's forcible crackdown hastened his decision to [[emigration|emigrate]] to the United States, and was the cause of his choice to write in English "to preserve the integrity of his work." He eventually obtained a [[Doctor of Philosophy|Ph.D.]] One of his mentors was literary critic [[Eugene Goodheart]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=最会用英语写作的中国人哈金：没有国家的人-搜狐文化频道 |url=http://cul.sohu.com/20141027/n405510432.shtml |access-date=2022-05-26 |website=cul.sohu.com}}</ref>

==Career==

=== Novels and short writing ===
Jin sets many of his stories and novels in China, in the fictional Muji City. He has won the [[National Book Award for Fiction]]<ref name="nba1999" /> and the [[PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction|PEN/Faulkner Award]] for his novel, ''[[Waiting (novel)|Waiting]]'' (1999). He has received three [[Pushcart Prize]]s for fiction and a [[The Kenyon Review|Kenyon Review Award]]. Many of his short stories have appeared in ''[[The Best American Short Stories]]'' anthologies. His collection ''Under the Red Flag'' (1997) won the [[Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction]], while ''Ocean of Words'' (1996) has been awarded the [[PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel|PEN/Hemingway Award]]. The novel ''[[War Trash]]'' (2004), set during the [[Korean War]], won a second [[PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction|PEN/Faulkner Award]] for Jin, thus ranking him with [[Philip Roth]], [[John Edgar Wideman]] and [[E. L. Doctorow]] as the only other authors to have won the prize more than once. ''[[War Trash]]'' was also a finalist for the [[Pulitzer Prize for Fiction]].

=== Teaching and academic work ===
Jin currently teaches at [[Boston University]] in [[Boston]], [[Massachusetts]]. He formerly taught at [[Emory University]] in [[Atlanta]], [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]].

Jin was a Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow for Fiction at the [[American Academy in Berlin]], [[Germany]], in the fall of 2008. He was inducted to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2014.

On July 28, 2021, an asteroid was named after him: (58495) Hajin.<ref>[https://www.iau.org/static/publications/wgsbn-bulletins/wgsbn-bulletin-2105.pdf WGSBN Bulletin] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220724215930/https://www.iau.org/static/publications/wgsbn-bulletins/wgsbn-bulletin-2105.pdf |date=2022-07-24 }} vom 28. Juli 2021, Volume 1, #5, S. 11 (PDF; englisch)</ref>

==Awards and honors==
*[[Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction]] (1996)
*[[PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel]] (1997)
*[[Guggenheim Fellowship]] (1999)
*[[National Book Award for Fiction]] (1999)<ref name=nba1999>[https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1999 "National Book Awards – 1999"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181124105650/https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1999/ |date=2018-11-24 }}. [[National Book Foundation]]. Retrieved 2012-03-27. <br/>(With acceptance speech by Jin and essay by Ru Freeman from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)</ref>
*[[PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction]] (2000)
*Asian Fellowship (2000–2002)
*Townsend Prize for Fiction (2002)
*[[PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction]] (2005)
*[[American Academy of Arts and Sciences|Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] (2006)
*[[Dayton Literary Peace Prize]], runner-up, ''Nanjing Requiem'' (2012)<ref>{{cite news |url=http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/winners-named-for-dayton-literary-peace-prize/ |title=Winners Named for Dayton Literary Peace Prize |date=September 30, 2012 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |author=Julie Bosman |access-date=2012-09-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121002023951/http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/winners-named-for-dayton-literary-peace-prize/ |archive-date=2012-10-02 |url-status=live }}</ref>
* [[PEN Oakland awards|PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award]] for ''A Distant Center'' (2019)

==Books==
{{Col-begin}}
{{Col-break}}

===Poetry===
* ''Between Silences'' (1990)
* ''Facing Shadows'' (1996)
* ''Ways of Talking'' (1996)
* ''Wreckage'' (2001)
* ''Missed Time''
* ''The Past''
* ''A Distant Center'' (2018, [[Copper Canyon Press]])

===Short story collections===
* ''[[Ocean of Words]]'' (1996)
* ''Under the Red Flag'' (1997)
* ''[[The Bridegroom (short story collection)|The Bridegroom]]'' (2000)
* ''A Good Fall'' (2009)
{{Col-break}}

===Novels===
* ''[[In the Pond]]'' (1998)
* ''[[Waiting (novel)|Waiting]]'' (1999)
* ''The Crazed'' (2002)
* ''[[War Trash]]'' (2004)
* ''[[A Free Life]]'' (2007)
* ''[[Nanjing Requiem]]'' (2011)
* ''[https://archive.org/details/mapofbetrayal0000jinh_o9a2/ A Map of Betrayal]'' (2014)
* ''The Boat Rocker'' (2016)
* ''A Song Everlasting'' (2021)
* ''The Woman Back from Moscow: In Pursuit of Beauty'' (2023)

===Biographies===
* ''[[The Banished Immortal]]'' (2019)

===Essays===
* ''The Writer as Migrant'' (2008)
{{col-end}}

==See also==
{{Portalbar|China|Biography|Poetry}}
* [[Saboteur (short story)]] (2000)

==References==
{{Reflist |25em}}

# John Noell Moore, "The Landscape Of Divorce When Worlds Collide," The English Journal 92 (Nov. 2002), pp.&nbsp;124–127.
# Ha Jin, ''Waiting'' (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999).
# Neil J Diamant, ''Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949-1968''(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), p.&nbsp;59.
# Ha Jin, ''The Bridegroom'' (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000).
# Yuejin Wang, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 13 (Dec. 1991).
# Ha Jin, "Exiled to English" (New York Times, May 30, 2009).

==External links==
*{{cite interview |interviewer=Sarah Fay |title=Ha Jin, The Art of Fiction No. 202 |url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5991/the-art-of-fiction-no-202-ha-jin |date=Winter 2009 |periodical=[[The Paris Review]] |issue=191}}
*{{cite interview |interviewer=[[Michael Silverblatt]] |title=The Bridegroom |url=http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/bookworm/ha-jin/ |publisher=KCRW |date=January 2001 |work=Bookworm}}
*[http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/indepth/the_forum.shtml Listen to Ha Jin on The Forum from the BBC World Service]
*[http://www.bu.edu/writing/faculty/ha-jin/ Boston University staff page]
*[http://www.guernicamag.com/spotlight/258/post/ Author interview in Guernica Magazine (guernicamag.com)]
*[http://www.thecommentary.ca/ontheline/20071126b.html Ha Jin audio interview re: A Free Life, November 2007]
*[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/opinion/31hajin.html Exiled to English]
*[http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1246_the_forum/page22.shtml Audio: Ha Jin in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion programme] [[The Forum (BBC World Service)|''The Forum'']]
*[https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/06/magazine/ha-jin-s-cultural-revolution.html "Ha Jin's Cultural Revolution" - New York Times Magazine profile (2000).]
* [http://lccn.loc.gov/n89118088 Ha Jin] at [[Library of Congress]] Authorities — with 20 catalog records

{{NBA for Fiction 1975–1999}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jin, Ha}}
[[Category:1956 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:20th-century American novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century American poets]]
[[Category:21st-century American novelists]]
[[Category:21st-century American poets]]
[[Category:American male novelists]]
[[Category:American male poets]]
[[Category:American male short story writers]]
[[Category:American novelists of Chinese descent]]
[[Category:American short story writers of Chinese descent]]
[[Category:Boston University faculty]]
[[Category:Brandeis University alumni]]
[[Category:Chinese emigrants to the United States]]
[[Category:Chinese male novelists]]
[[Category:Emory University faculty]]
[[Category:Exophonic writers]]
[[Category:Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction winners]]
[[Category:National Book Award winners]]
[[Category:PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winners]]
[[Category:Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winners]]
[[Category:Postmodern writers]]
[[Category:Misty poets]]
[[Category:Shandong University alumni]]
[[Category:Heilongjiang University alumni]]
[[Category:Educators from Liaoning]]
[[Category:Poets from Liaoning]]
[[Category:Writers from Liaoning]]
[[Category:Novelists from Massachusetts]]
[[Category:Novelists from Georgia (U.S. state)]]
[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]
[[Category:21st-century American male writers]]
[[Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters]]
[[Category:Signatories of Charter 08]]