Fan Wu

Fan Wu is the author of three critically acclaimed novels and numerous short stories and essays. She grew up on a state-run farm in southern China. In her early twenties, she received a scholarship from Stanford University and travelled to the U.S. to study. After earning an M.A in mass media research, she worked at a high-tech company in Silicon Valley, where she began to write in her spare time.

Her latest novel (2024), is SOULS LEFT BEHIND. Set in France and China, spanning more than half a century, it is a story of the Chinese Labour Corps, recruited by the British government during the First World War to support war efforts in the rear. It was first published in China in 2023, and has been voted by varied leading media as A Best Novel of the Month, A Best Book of the Season, and A Best Book of the Month by Reader's Choice. The book is now available in English.

- “Highly original...ambitious...It is an imaginative tour de force. We see the Great War from an entirely new perspective. A remarkable achievement” (Patrick Marnham, award-winning author of War in the Shadows, Fellow of the Royal Society Literature)

- "Gripping, often startling, elegantly constructed and always entirely convincing. Fan Wu tells her strange story with such humanity and humour that I couldn't put it down" (Hilary Spurling, award-winning biographer and journalist).

- "Fan Wu has excavated their stories with her timely novel and lead their wandering souls home. History's ghosts are remembered, honored, and vindicated in Fan Wu's exquisite tribute." (Sandra Cisneros, bestselling author of House on the Mango Street)

Her first two novels are FEBRUARY FLOWERS (Simon and Schuster, Picador), published in 10 languages, and BEAUTIFUL AS YESTERDAY, praised by Amy Tan as “a story with intelligence, insight, and heart.”

Her short fiction, besides being anthologized, translated, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, has appeared in GRANTA, The MISSOURI REVIEW, PLOUGHSHARES, ASIA LITERARY REVIEW, and elsewhere.

Fan Wu writes in both English and Chinese, and often translates between the two. She's completing her fourth novel.

She has attended numerous literary conferences and festivals as a speaker and a panelist, and has helped organize multiple international literary events. She's a member of Macondo Workshop. She is a trustee and long-time volunteer at the London-based charity, Mothers' Bridge of Love, which supports adoptive families and rural children in China. She's a co-founder at Society of Heart's Delight (愉园社), a California-based nonprofit to foster understanding and communication between Chinese immigrants and other cultural and ethnic groups. She's the creator of the grant-winning bilingual photoblog of "Chinese immigrants in Silicon Valley and Beyond - My Story, My Community, My Home." This photoblog showcases the variety of the Chinese community as a cultural and ethnic group and advocates for cultural sensitivity, understanding, and inclusion.

Fan Wu lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and travels to China as often as she can. She's married with two young children. She is currently earning a graduate degree in Clinical Psychology at Santa Clara University.