Join Black Mountain Institute and the UNLV Department of English as we celebrate Creative Writing faculty member Wendy Chen for her debut novel, Their Divine Fires. A captivating and intimate story interwoven with folktale and myth, the book is shaped by love affairs of three generations of Chinese women across one hundred years of revolutions, both political and personal. Drawing on the lives of her great-grandmother and her great-uncles—both of whom fought on the side of the Communists—as well as her mother’s experiences during the Cultural Revolution, Dr. Chen infuses Their Divine Fires with a passion that will transport the reader back to powerful moments in history while bringing us close to the women who persisted despite the forces all around them.
Wendy Chen is also the author of the poetry collection UNEARTHINGS (Tavern Books). Her translations of Song-dynasty woman writer Li Qingzhao are forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2025 in a collection titled THE MAGPIE AT NIGHT. She is the recipient of prizes and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, MacDowell, & elsewhere. Her writing has appeared widely in prestigious venues such as Freeman’s, A Public Space, & Mid-American Review. Her work has been translated into multiple languages and adapted into musical compositions. She has taught and spoken at colleges, universities, and arts organizations such as the Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, Poetry Foundation, & Yale University.
She is the editor of Figure 1 and associate editor-in-chief of Tupelo Quarterly. Previously, she was the poetry and translation editor of Denver Quarterly. She earned her MFA in poetry from Syracuse University and her PhD in English from the University of Denver. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.