Michael X. Wang
Writer, Teacher, Explorer
Selected Fiction
Further News of Defeat: Stories
September 2020
Steeped in a long history of violence and suffering, Michael X. Wang’s debut collection of short stories interrogates personal and political events set against the backdrop of China that are both real and perceived, imagined and speculative. Wang plunges us into the fictional Chinese village of Xinchun and beyond to explore themes of tradition, family, modernity, and immigration in a country grappling with its modern identity. Further News of Defeat is rich with characters who have known struggle and defeat and who find themselves locked in pivotal moments of Chinese history—such as World War II and the Tiananmen Square massacre—as they face losses of the highest order and still find cause for revival.


A Minor Revolution
December, 2013
When Shen’s husband, economics professor Zhou Peng, says he’s joining his students on hunger strike in Tiananmen Square, she begs him to reconsider. The army tanks are already hemming in the gathering protestors, and Shen, an illiterate woman from the countryside, understands better than the students the real threat of violent retaliation. When her predictions come true and Zhou Peng is thrown in jail and the city descends into heartrending chaos, this vulnerable young woman must find her way out of Beijing, saving her son by finding a strength she never knew she had.

The Fable of the Footless Man
Excerpt from Lost in the Long March
Summer 2021
A jade miner finds a prize only a king can afford. Will he receive the award he deserves?
The Color of the Planet Earth
Spring 2020
Humanity has crumbled. The survivors hover above the atmosphere. Can an unlikely friendship redeem a world that has already perished?


Catalogers of the Galaxy
Winter 2015
Finding the aliens means finding Hayden's rockstar father, and Hayden wants nothing more than to be with his father.

At This Moment, In This Space
Spring 2015
Physicist Paul Hwang has lost all his sons. Can he find them in another dimension?