Ha Jin

Ha Jin is a Chinese-born American novelist, short story writer and poet who writes in English about life in China and the immigrant experience. He joined the People's Liberation Army at fourteen and served for five years, then studied English at Heilongjiang University and American literature at Shandong University. He came to the United States in 1986 to pursue a doctorate at Brandeis University and later earned an MFA from Boston University.

His first books of fiction were the story collections Ocean of Words (1996) and Under the Red Flag (1997). His novel Waiting, about an army doctor torn between his village wife and the nurse he loves, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1999. His later novels include War Trash and A Free Life (2007), and he has published four books of poetry, among them A Distant Center (2019).

Ha Jin taught at Emory University and then at Boston University, where he is now professor emeritus.