Wendy Xu

cantfindit

Wendy Xu is a poet, editor, and professor, most recently the author of The Past, published by Wesleyan in September 2021. Phrasis (Fence Books) was named one of the 10 Best Poetry Books of 2017 by The New York Times Book Review. Her debut collection You Are Not Dead (2013) was named by Poets & Writers Magazine as one of the year’s Top 10 debuts. Xu was awarded the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry in 2011, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation in 2014, and her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, Tin House, Poetry, Ploughshares, and widely elsewhere. Her work has been supported by fellowships from Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Born in Shandong, China, she holds an MFA from the Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She has been on creative writing faculty at The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Columbia University, New York University, and is currently Assistant Professor of Writing (Poetry) at The New School in New York City. She lives in Brooklyn. Source

excerpt from “You Are Not Dead”

The only thing

I ever made

which is worth

anything at all

is a promise

to my friends

to keep

moving.

 

Published:

2013

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2025

Themes:

Agency

Friendship

Mental Health

Literary Devices:

Enjambment

a line break interrupting the middle of a phrase which continues on to the next line

Hyperbole

exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally