Milkweed Books
1011 S Washington Avenue
Suite 107
Minneapolis, MN 55415
United States
This event is free and open to the public. RSVPs encouraged but not required.
Join Milkweed Books as we celebrate Diana Xin’s newest collection of short stories, Book of Exemplary Women, out December 1 with Yes Yes Books. Diana will read from her new book and engage in conversation with the audience.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In Book of Exemplary Women, Diana Xin’s debut short story collection, a ghost is passed across three generations of women as they navigate unspoken regrets and unfulfilled desires. Teen girls grapple with grief as they face the end of childhood and other losses. Young lovers confront the future while old lovers excavate the past. Mothers and daughters perceive each other in new ways as time reshapes their relationship. Across different stages of life, women strain against the expectations that rule their lives with quiet rebellion, bending and breaking to find new forms large enough to contain all that they carry. Together, their voices resist erasure, tracing how women hold themselves and each other intact.
To create the cracks that expand possibility and challenge limitations, Xin presents both realist stories and their shadows–distortions upon the same themes with elements of magic, from light-touch hauntings to imagined literary trysts. Her characters defy the erasure common to stories about women. When they step off the page, they do so with defiance, laughing and raging as they slip beyond reach.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Born in the Hebei province of China and raised in the American Midwest, Diana Xin lived in Chicago, Beijing, and Missoula before landing in Seattle. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana and a BS in journalism from Northwestern University. She is a recipient of fellowships and residencies from Hedgebrook, Artist Trust of Washington State, The M Literary Residency in Beijing, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Her work has received a Pushcart nomination and other honors from Narrative Magazine, The Missouri Review, Third Coast Quarterly, and elsewhere. Book of Exemplary Women is her first full-length collection.