You have reached the homepage of Karen Kao’s website, Shanghai Noir. Karen died on March 16, 2025, almost two years after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I, her husband Frans, intend to keep this site alive, given all the material Karen had already put into it.
Karen had planned to gradually transfer the content to her substack Swimming Upside Down, which is why there have been no new postings here since 2022. For now, I will leave things as they are. I am not sure it is worth the effort to transfer everything to the substack site, but I may, eventually.
Karen’s book Swimming Upside Down will be published by Sarabande Publishers, as she won the Sarabande Prize in the Essay, about a month after she died. Karen also won the Sweet Lit Creative Nonfiction Flash Essay Contest, which is now renamed in her honor. Sweet Lit also started the Karen Kao Memorial Fund. Please take a look and donate if this appeals to you. At the Sweet Lit pages you will also find an interview with Dinty Moore and with me about her life.
Welcome to my author website. You can read about my work as a novelist, essayist, and writer of short fiction and poetry.
My novel, The Dancing Girl and the Turtle, takes place in 1930s Shanghai. It’s the first in a quartet of novels all set in Shanghai.
My essays have been selected as a 2024 Notable by The Best American Essays, winner of the 2022 Kenyon Review Short Nonfiction Contest, and nominee for the Pushcart Prize.
Journals have nominated my short fiction for the Pushcart Prize and VERA. Long ago, I had some poetry published, too.
As of May 2023, the photo above shows all my work in print to date. It’s a harvest of which I’m tremendously proud. My heart pounds equally hard for publications that exist only on the internet. You can find the links to that online work in the navigation bar by genre.
On this author website, you can learn more about me and my writing. Have a look around. Read the backstory to my debut novel, my most recent book reviews or old blog posts from a seven month long trip around the world.
Starting November 2024, you can find me on Substack with new lyric essays, reviews of lyric essay collections, and publishing news at Swimming Upside Down.
Enjoy!