Cynthia Liu
About
Cynthia Liu is an American-born Chinese woman (she/hers) who comes from seven generations of Lius in Fuzhou, China. She grew up in NY and MD, but California truly formed her. It's where her child was born; it's where her parents journeyed to the Great Beyond.
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Always in her heart: the cities of Oakland and Los Angeles, and a really good taco.
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Her prose has appeared in The Progressive, The Washington Post, an anthology of genderqueer writing, and the literary journal emerge. She has received an Artist Trust GAP Grant and the Elizabeth Mills Crothers Short Story Prize, and participated in the Jack Straw Writers Program. Residencies include Hedgebrook and the Vermont Studio Center.
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Her screenwriting won the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment New Writers Award, and various scripts have placed in quarter-/semi-/finalist rounds in the ABC/Disney Scholarship, David Henry Hwang Writing Institute; Sundance Screenwriting Lab; Austin Heart of Film Festival Screenwriting Contest; and Writer’s Network Screenwriting Contest. She wrote, directed, and produced a romcom short, RED THREAD, which won a Worldfest Houston Film Festival Bronze Award and was released on dvd. She was a Film Independent Project Involve Fellow.
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She lives in the bioregion of Cascadia, on unceded land stewarded for time immemorial by Coast Salish peoples.
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Learn more about her activism and her storytelling here.
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The 2009 Great Recession pushed me into becoming an advocate for education justice because I believe schools are a public good capable of uplifting ALL. And you don't cut your way to greatness. Now grassroots pro-public education warriors, already stretched thin, are on the front lines of a vicious culture war.
I won a screenwriting contest, I took some meetings. Before I knew it, I was making films.
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As much as I loved working with a crew, filmmaking clashed hard with my education justice work. I had to choose. I chose kids.
My dissertation couldn't contain all the things I wanted to say, so I wrote a novel, six screenplays, and a short story cycle too. It's this work I'm returning to now.
And yes, parts of my other lives are woven into this work. How could it not be?