Maxine Hong Kingston, as Distinguished Visiting Scholar, visited classes, gave readings, and shared her widom on topic ranging from writing to current events.  She participated in the University’s 2007 Academic Conference, "Scholarship of Application: Integration and Connection," as a member of two panels, "The Artist, University, and Society," and "Iraq and Vietnam: A Conversation." 

Kingston, an award-winning author, has published Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts; China Men; Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book; Hawaii One Summer; To Be a Poet; The Fifth Book of Peace; and her most recent work, Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace.  She is known for writing novels that draw on her family’s backfround as Chinese immigrants to the United States.  Woman Warrior won the National Book Critic’s Circle Award for nonfiction and China Men won the American Book Award for nonfiction.  In 1997, she was awarded the National Humanities Award by the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Kingston is a senior lecturer at University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches creative writing.