Emily Luan

Emily Lee Luan is an American poet. She is the author of two prize-winning books of poetry: I Watch the Boughs, which was the recipient of a chapbook fellowship by the Poetry Society of America, and 回 / Return, which won the Nightboat Poetry Prize.

Early life and education

Luan's parents grew up in Taiwan. Occasionally, Luan went back to Taiwan with her parents when she was young. Later, she graduated from Middlebury College as an English major in 2015; she had worked at the New England Review in 2014. Afterward, she attended the MFA program at Rutgers University–Newark where she both studied and taught poetry.

Career

In 2020, Luan won the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship, after which she published her poetry chapbook, I Watch the Boughs. Luan's manuscript had been selected by Gabrielle Calvocoressi.

In 2023, Luan published 回 / Return with Nightboat Books. It had won the 2022 Nightboat Poetry Prize. The Adroit Journal compared the book to M. NourbeSe Philip's "The Absence of Writing or How I Almost Became a Spy" and lauded Luan's "language, absence, and longing rupture against the linearity of time, finality of death, and limits of a life." Publishers Weekly called it a rich and vivid exploration of the Taiwanese American diaspora and said "Through recurring and interwoven motifs of memory, myth, and grief, Luan offers a subtle, engaging, and linguistically exciting reflection on language and place."

Luan was a 2020 Margins Fellow with the Asian American Writers' Workshop.

Personal life

Luan is based in New York City.