Poetry. Prose. Asian American Studies. "MAD SCIENCE IN IMPERIAL CITY is propelled by the personal loss and trauma Shanxing Wang experienced during the political turbulence of the 1980s which culminated in the 1989 tragedy at Tiananmen Square. From this personal experience, Wang has created a work of art-in-language which breaks new territories of poetic form. The central urgency of Wang's work is a fractured personal and ideological loss; mirroring this, the work manufactures its own form on the page as a broken narrative. Like Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Wang's work materializes the shattered effects of cultural history on the mind of the poet who is trying to piece his life together in its devastating and unresolved wake."—Kristin Prevallet

Author City: Queens, NY USA

Shanxing Wang was born in Jinzhong, Shanxi Province, China, and educated at Xi'an Jiaotong University. In 1991, he came to the U.S. to pursue a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at University of California at Berkeley. While teaching Engineering at Rutgers University, he began taking courses in Creative Writing and subsequently received a Zora Neale Hurston Scholarship to attend the summer writing program at Naropa University in Colorado. In 2003, he was selected as a finalist for the Pen USA Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellowship. MAD SCIENCE IN IMPERIAL CITY is his first book. He currently lives and writes in Queens, New York.