Aimee Liu
2024 Moderator
Aimee Liu is a best-selling novelist, essayist, and nonfiction author. Though one quarter Chinese, she felt an allegiance to India, despite being born and mostly raised in the U.S. Her father’s career with the United Nations gave her a stamp of internationality that made her more inclusive than exclusive about her cultural identity. As a result, she has always been partial to stories and images of people with mixed heritage.
Her novels Face and Cloud Mountain are based on her family’s mixed-race history and examination of her Chinese-American identity. Flash House, centers on an American social worker whose quest to rescue her missing husband produces an unlikely bond with a native child of mysterious origins in India and western China in 1949. Her most recent novel, Glorious Boy, is a tale of war and devotion, longing and loss, and the power of love to prevail. Set in India’s remote Andaman Islands before and during WWII, the story revolves around a mysteriously mute four-year-old who vanishes on the eve of the Japanese occupation.
Aimee also ghosted or co-authored more than a dozen books on psychology and medical topics, edited business and trade publications, and worked as a flight attendant and as associate producer for NBC’s TODAY show. She taught in Goddard College’s low-residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Port Townsend, WA.
Author's Website