Discipline: Literature – poetry

Xue Di

Discipline: Literature – poetry
Region: Providence, RI
MacDowell Fellowships: 2001
Xue Di is a poet and a native of Beijing who left China after taking part in the 1989 demonstrations in Tian’anmen Square. He has been a fellow in Brown’s Freedom to Write program since 1990. In the U.S., Xue Di has published three books in English translation, Flames (paradigm press, 1995), a cycle of poems dedicated to Vincent Van Gogh; Heart into Soil (Burning Deck/Lost Roads Press, 1998); and Circumstances (Duration Press, 2000). Three volumes of Xue Di’s collected works, prepared for publication in mainland China in 1999, were stopped on press due to governmental censorship. That same year, Xue Di received a grant from the Joukowsky Foundation that has allowed him to remain at Brown and continue his writing.

Studios

Wood

Xue Di worked in the Wood studio.

Wood Studio, given to the residency program by Mrs. Frederick Trevor Hill, was completed in 1913 in memory of Mrs. Hill’s mother, Helen Ogden Wood. Like Schelling Studio, the building is sided with large, overlapping pieces of hemlock bark. When the studio was renovated in 1995, MacDowell staff researched the origins of this unusual building material and…

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