“Darien Hsu Gee is like no other writer working today.”
Kristina Marie Darling, Editor in Chief, Tupelo Quarterly
Darien Hsu Gee is the author of five novels published by Penguin Random House that have been translated into eleven languages. In October 2023, she was appointed the Third Mark Twain Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Connecticut, following Alexander Chee and Justin Torres.
In 2022, Darien served as executive editor for the anthology, Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World, which received a Silver IPPY award for multicultural nonfiction. In 2021, her collection of micro essays, Allegiance, received the Bronze IPPY award in the Essays category. Darien is a recipient of a 2019 Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship award for Other Small Histories and a 2015 Hawai‘i Book Publishers’ Ka Palapala Poʻokela Award of Excellence for Writing the Hawai‘i Memoir. Her work has been supported by a Sustainable Arts Foundation grant and a Vermont Studio Center fellowship. Her next book, Fortune Cookie (Object Lessons series), will be published by Bloomsbury in 2028.
Darien teaches creative nonfiction at UCLA Extension and Hugo House, and on her teaching platforms, Writer-ish and Writer-ish on Substack, which focuses on the art of micro prose. Darien serves on the Hawaiʻi Island Leadership Council for the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation and the literary journal, Short Reads. She also serves on the Advisory Board for the Flash Fiction Institute. Past board positions include the Friends and Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library, ZYZZYVA, and the Kahilu Theatre.
She has two bestseller Substacks: Writer-ish which focuses on the art of micro prose, and Drafts, Deals & Detours which focuses on the writing life.
Darien holds a B.A. from Rice University and an M.F.A. from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. She lives with her family on the Big Island of Hawai‘i.