Yang Huang grew up in Yangzhou, China and came to the U.S. to study computer science. While working as an engineer, she studied literature and pursued writing. Yang attended Boston College and earned an MFA from the University of Arizona. Read about her journey: Why I Write, and Why I Write In English.
Her new novel Oasis, a love story set in modern China from 1976 to 1992 amidst climate change, won the inaugural Cai Emmons Fiction Award and will be published by the Red Hen Press in spring 2027.
Her novel My Good Son won the University of New Orleans Press Publishing Lab Prize. Her linked story collection, My Old Faithful, won the Juniper Prize for fiction, and her debut novel, Living Treasures, won the Nautilus Book Award silver medal in fiction.
Her essays, stories, and screenplay have appeared in Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, The Millions, Taste, The Margins, Asian Pacific American Journal, Stories for Film, and elsewhere.
Yang lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and works for the University of California, Berkeley. Besides her day job and family life, she writes fiction and creates a more tolerant and hopeful world in stories.
Yang Huang discusses the perils of Chinese motherhood in Living Treasures.
"In writing I can let down my walls, suspend my moral judgment, and pour my deepest compassion into the written words."