Peter Ho Davies
Professor
PROFILE:
PETER HO DAVIES is the author of the novel The Welsh Girl
(2007) and the story collections The Ugliest House in the World (1997)
and Equal Love (2000). His work has appeared in Harpers, The Atlantic
Monthly, The Paris Review, The Washington Post and Chicago Tribune,
among others, and his short fiction has been widely anthologized,
including selections for Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards 1998 and
Best American Short Stories 1995, 96 and 2001. In 2003 Granta magazine
named him among its twenty Best Young British Novelists, and in 2008 he received the PEN/Malamud award for excellence in the short story. The Ugliest
House in the World was awarded the John Llewelyn Rhys and PEN/Macmillan
Prizes in the UK; Equal Love, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year
was a finalist for the 2000 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the 2001
Asian American Literary Award. The Welsh Girl
was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and the IMPAC award, and short-listed for The British Book Award Best Read of the Year. Davies is a recipient of fellowships
from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and
the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He has previously taught at the
University of Oregon, Emory University and Northwestern University.
Peter Ho Davies online:
An interview with Virginia Quarterly Review
Top 10 story collections as chosen for the Guardian Newspaper
Peter Ho Davies on the Workshop
My guiding approach in workshop is to try to first consider the aims of
any story under discussion and then determine its strengths and
weaknesses in light of those aims. I believe as writers we often learn
as much from what we do well as what we do badly (and are often as
unsure of both) so my classes focus on both problems and successes in
the stories examined.
An Excerpt from Peter Ho Davies
from THE NEXT LIFE
The mourners were playing poker around the rosewood table the night before his father's funeral, and Lim was winning.
They had begun the game to help themselves stay awake during the vigil. Pang had produced the new deck from a pocket of his white mourning suit and asked Lim's permission earlier in the evening. "It'll amuse the ghost," he said, indicating the casket. "Being able to see all our cards."
Now it was almost dawn and Lim had been winning for an hour or more. It was uncomfortable. Where before they had talked softly among themselves now they played in silence. Lim wished he could get up and leave, but it seemed improper to end the game ahead. Every time he told himself to fold he would look at his cards and find a pair of aces, a wild card, four cards to a flush, something too good to turn down. He bet heavily on mediocre hands, hoping to have his bluff called, but the others were afraid of his good fortune now. When one of them did stay in, Lim made a hand with his last card and still took the pot.
He fanned his cards to study them and thought of the coffin over his shoulder.Publications:
"The Welsh Girl: a novel" (2007) "Equal Love: Stories" (2000); "The Ugliest House in the World: Stories" (1997); Short stories, essays and reviews in Harpers, The Atlantic, Paris Review, Granta, Ploughshares, Story, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, The Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post among others. Anthologized in Best American Short Stories 1995, 1996, 2001 and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards 1998.
Reasearch Interests:
Department Areas of Study: American: Twentieth-Century American; British: Twentieth-Century British; Creative Writing; Novel and Narrative; Writing of Fiction
Primary: Creative Writing (fiction), Contemporary British and American fiction, History of the Short Story
Secondary: Creative non-fiction, Film, Theory and Practice of Teaching Creative Writing
profile
