Leung, Brian 1967- (Brian Joseph Leung)

views updated

Leung, Brian 1967- (Brian Joseph Leung)

PERSONAL:

Born January 10, 1967, in San Diego, CA. Education: California State University, B.A., M.A.; Indiana University, M.F.A., 2000.

ADDRESSES:

Home—KY.

CAREER:

During early career, taught in Cincinnati, OH; California State University, Northridge, former assistant professor; University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, currently assistant professor.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Mary McCarthy Prize in short fiction, Sarabande Books, 2002, for World Famous Love Acts; Asian American Literary Award for fiction.

WRITINGS:

(With Eve Adamson and Nikki Moustaki) Not Another Feel Good Singles Book, Alpha (Indianapolis, IN), 2003.

World Famous Love Acts (short stories), Sarabande Books (Louisville, KY), 2004.

Lost Men (novel), Shaye Areheart Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor of poetry and short fiction to periodicals, including Story, Crazyhorse, Grain, Gulf Coast, Kinesis, Mid-American Review, Salt Hill, Gulf Stream, River City, Bellingham Review, and Connecticut Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Brian Leung's first collection of short stories, World Famous Love Acts, won the Mary McCarthy Prize in short fiction from Sarabande Books—a prize that included publication of the collection. The book brought Leung much praise for its portrayal of both human diversity and commonality. The characters include an actress who works in pornographic films, an elderly farmer contemplating his mortality, a gay couple traveling across the country, and children who channel their anger by playing make-believe games of murder. Some of the characters, like Leung, are of Chinese heritage, and most of the stories relate in some way to the small town of Blue Falls, Washington. Leung's overriding theme, in the eyes of a Kirkus Reviews contributor, is "the fragility of people's connections both to one another and to their roots."

The narratives in the book show Leung to be a "master storyteller," commented Carol Haggas in Booklist. His characters "leave their mark on the reader's psyche" and "reveal the common thread connecting us all," she added. Nicholas Fonseca, writing in Entertainment Weekly, observed that Leung's characters "present a wide and satisfying range" and that the author describes their lives in "beautiful, concise prose."

Lost Men, Leung's first novel, looks at male relationships, particularly those of a father and his son, as well as different aspects of male identity, race, and sexuality. When Westen Chan is eight, his mother is hit by a car and killed, and his father, Xin, turns the boy over to his aunt and uncle rather than raise him himself. Twenty-five years later, Xin writes to his son and invites him to travel to China with him, leading to a journey of awkward rediscovery between the two men who no longer know each other but are attempting to put their ghosts to rest. Leung alternates points of view between Xin and Westen from chapter to chapter. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews found the book "a patient, artfully controlled work about memory, regret and love." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly felt that Leung "does a marvelous job negotiating the two men's fraught cultural and emotional legacies."

Brian Leung once told CA: "I recall in first grade writing a single sentence about a plane taking off without my teacher who had told us she was going to visit her grandmother. This sentence, along with a brilliant illustration, pleased Ms. Rodgers greatly. From that point on I was always the student who could write, though my heavy consumption of television should have thwarted any talent I had. Still I proceeded with my little stories, clever and unchallenged. But when I got to college I ran into a kind of buzz saw named Kate Braverman, an absolutely brilliant Los Angeles writer. She hated the ‘cuteness’ of what I was writing. After some initial resentment, I understood that in order to grow as a writer, I had to abandon ‘easy pleasing,’ as I now call it. From that point on, I started to consider myself as a writer and reader and thinker with much to live up to.

"First I'm struck, angered, titillated, or bemused. I mull. I mull some more. I mulled a novel for a year before ever writing a word. Then, I cursed every morning I woke because I had to go to the computer. I can't stand sitting down to write, though after about five minutes I wonder why I didn't get up earlier. Depending on how long I can fight off the cats, I write for about three hours a day, and then the world intrudes."