After Yahoo!, Fan Wu writes

Posted August 16th, 2007 at 12:42 pm by Havi Hoffman, Yahoo! Developer Network

Number of Comments 2 Comments / Filed in: Those Crazy Yahoos

February Flowers book cover On August 7, February Flowers, a lyrical first novel set in southern China was published in the United States, where its author, Fan Wu, makes her home. I know Fan as Cindy, the name she took 10 years ago when she arrived in California for graduate school. After earning a masters from Stanford in Mass Media Studies, Cindy took a job at Yahoo!, and that’s how we met.

In 2000, I was writing and editing Yahoo! Picks and Ask Yahoo!. Cindy wanted to know more about my work. We talked about writing — and reading — in English. Her appetite for literature was wide-ranging and eclectic. I remember a conversation about Raymond Carver’s short stories. At that time, she was attracted to Carver’s lean American prose. We also spoke about Joseph Conrad, the Polish-born storyteller who lived in Britain and wrote brilliant and prolific fiction in English, and Ha Jin, the award-winning contemporary Chinese-American writer.

By 2002, Cindy had begun to write fiction in English. She attended writers’ workshops and found mentors and peers. She read, she wrote — and she kept working. Work at Yahoo! paid the bills, and gave her the freedom to find her own way as a writer.

Fast forward to September 2006. February Flowers by Fan Wu debuts in Asia and Australia, where it receives exultant reviews. The story of two young women students in China in the early nineteen nineties, it explores a friendship that blossoms within the confines of a “restrained” traditional culture during a time of social change. China was beginning to prosper and open up to the west. In the self-reliant, independent-minded characters of the two friends, traditional China is remixed with the new. The girls grow up and drift apart. Years later, Ming, the narrator, recovers memories of their friendship in a new century, on her way to a new continent.

So, where’s Cindy now? Recently Fan Wu left her job at Yahoo! to focus on her second novel. This week, I emailed to ask her about life after Yahoo!. Cindy replied:

“Writing is a lonely pursuit. In my post-Yahoo! life, I, of course, miss getting paid every two weeks, but what I miss the most is not being able to see my Yahoo! friends often, to chat over lunch or coffee…”

In the coming months, you can find her around the Bay Area at a variety of book readings, signings and events. And catch her at Kepler’s bookstore in Menlo Park on Thursday, August 23 at 7:30 pm.

Tell her Yodel Anecdotal sent you!

Havi Hoffman
Influencer Marketing

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