Pete Hsu on If I Were the Ocean, I’d Carry You Home

Pete Hsu is a Taiwanese American writer based in Pasadena, CA. He is the author of the experimental chapbook, There Is a Man (Tolsun Books). His work has also been featured in several journals and anthologies, including The Asian American Writer’s Workshop’s The Margins, F(r)iction, The Los Angeles Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. He was a 2017 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow, as well as the 2017 PEN in the Community Writer in Residence. Full of warmth, terror, and unsentimental humor, If I Were the Ocean, I’d Carry You Home, Pete Hsu’s debut story collection, captures the essence of survival in a life set adrift. Children and young people navigate a world where the presence of violence and death rear themselves in everyday places: Vegas casinos, birthday parties, church services, and sunny days at the beach. Each story is a meditation on living in a world not made for us—the pervasive fear, the adaptations, the unexpected longings. A gripping and energetic debut, Hsu’s writing beats with the naked rhythms of an unsettled human heart.