Ha Jin left his native China in 1985 for the States. He is a poet and author of two novels, Waiting (which won the US National Book Award and the Pen/Faulkner Award in 1999), and In the Pond, and two previous collections of stories, Ocean of Words (which won the Pen/Hemingway Award in 1997), and Under the Red Flag. He lives near Atlanta, where teaches English at Emory University.