Wes Stevens
Wes Stevens is a Hong Kong-based writer and educator. His first book is A-R-C-H-I-P-E-L-A-G-O, a collection of Asian short stories.
Lost Men by Brian Leung
WES STEVENS | 12 July 2007Xin, the son of a Chinese landowner, gets shot while escaping to Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution. The wounds heal.
A more tragic injury occurs through the father's rejection of Xin's Caucasian American bride. Yet a horrible, separately unexpected incident cripples the marriage at its onset, and the... [ more ]
A Fragile Hope by Ken Kamoche
WES STEVENS | 17 April 2007By linking Africa to East Asia and Europe, KEN KAMOCHE riffs uniquely.
A Kenyan-born Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Kamoche has used jazz improvisation to teach business management, and in his collected short stories, "A Fragile Hope", money dealings have a way of proliferating into hard compromises. The book focuses on Africa (as the musician character Toumane in "The Smell of Fresh Grass" gently chides Lisa,... [ more ]
I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China by Zhu Wen
WES STEVENS | 13 March 2007The titular novella in ZHU WEN's I LOVE DOLLARS AND OTHER STORIES OF CHINA asserts Zhu's reputation for rebelliousness. He's been compared to both Kafka and Borges. Henry Miller could perhaps be added to that list. Zhu's brash, over-the-top challenges to sexual and social taboos reflect Miller's penniless exuberances, and sixty years later, in a China struggling with ideological paradox, censorship remains a force.
Fruit Dreams and Other Asian Stories by Roseanne Thong
WES STEVENS | 25 January 2007The visceral appeal of Asia is a recurring theme for authors, columnists and travelers alike. Informed by a Doctorate of Education, journalistic savvy, and fifteen years of living and writing in the region, Californian-born ROSEANNE THONG delivers, with elegant attention to detail and tone, a beautifully balanced insight into the sights, flavors, and cultural fabric of everyday Asian lives.
Locked Out, Stories Far from Home by Alison Jean Lester
WES STEVENS | 03 December 2006It's one thing for a westerner to arrive in Asia unattached; it's an altogether different thing to have a partner and children in tow. Add in ambivalence toward that spouse, coupled with natural concern for children in unfamiliar environs, and one begins to enter the potentially isolating terrain of ALISON JEAN LESTER's new short story collection, LOCKED OUT, STORIES FAR FROM HOME.
Lester's direct, straightforward storytelling --... [ more ]
