Jesse Lee Kercheval Discusses Idea Vilariño

Q: Poemas de amor, in which "I Write Think Read" and "I Am Here" were published, was first published in 1957 and revised multiple times throughout her life. Were the "I Write Think Read" and "I Am Here" published in different forms as well? How did the book change in its subsequent versions?

Dustin: So I understand that this novel took you nine years to write. Can you explain your process of writing the novel over those nine years?

Xu Xi: Okay nine years is sort of deceptive. What happened in those nine years was I moved from New York back to Hong Kong, and to find a full time job I put out two books, three, actually, if you count the one I was editing plus some second editions of other books that came out. So all this other stuff was happening but the actual writing of the book took a little longer than nine years. I hit a point about five years along where I’d thought I’d finished it, and this was in Switzerland at a writer’s residency and I was like “Yay, the book is done!” I went back to Hong Kong and I went “Oh my God, this is all wrong.”