Name Alexander Kuo | ||
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Alexander Kuo (born 1941? in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American teacher, poet, fiction writer, and essayist. He was a Professor of English at Washington State University, and retired in 2012. He has taught in numerous academic institutions in China, including Beijing and Changchun universities. In 2002 he won an American Book Award for his Lipstick and Other Stories of the Before Columbus Foundation.
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Early life and education
Alexander Kuo was born into a Chinese-American family in Boston, Massachusetts. He received his B.A. from Knox College in Illinois in 1961, where he studied with Sam Moon and Gogisi. He earned an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, where he studied in the Iowa Writer's Workshop with Donald Justice and Philip Roth.
Career
Kuo was a professor of English at Washington State University (WSU), which lists him as an example of their "world class faculty." He is the former chair of the Department of Comparative American Cultures (now called Comparative Ethnic Studies). In 2001, WSU named him as their first Writer-in-Residence.
Kuo has been a mentor to Sherman Alexie, a notable Native American writer.
Honors
Writing
Reviewer Robert H. Abel said in 2001 that Kuo's writing makes demands on the reader in a way comparable to Franz Kafka or Jorge Luis Borges.