Peter Ho Davies was born in 1966 to Welsh and Chinese parents. He has degrees in Physics and English, and was awarded an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University. He has worked in Malaysia, Singapore, and the USA, and was also, for a time, UK business manager for Varsity.
His work has appeared in a variety of magazines and newspapers, and his short fiction is widely anthologized, including selections for Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards 1998 and Best American Short Stories 1995, 1996 and 2001. His own first published collection of short stories was The Ugliest House in the World (1998), which contains tales set in Malaysia, South Africa and Patagonia. This collection won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award and the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. His second collection, Equal Love, was published in 2000.
Peter Ho Davies lives in the United States and directs the MFA Programme in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. He is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. In 2003, he was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty 'Best of Young British Novelists'.
His first novel, The Welsh Girl, set in a Welsh village during the second world war, was published in 2007.
His work has appeared in a variety of magazines and newspapers, and his short fiction is widely anthologized, including selections for Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards 1998 and Best American Short Stories 1995, 1996 and 2001. His own first published collection of short stories was The Ugliest House in the World (1998), which contains tales set in Malaysia, South Africa and Patagonia. This collection won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award and the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. His second collection, Equal Love, was published in 2000.
Peter Ho Davies lives in the United States and directs the MFA Programme in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. He is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. In 2003, he was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty 'Best of Young British Novelists'.
His first novel, The Welsh Girl, set in a Welsh village during the second world war, was published in 2007.
Awards: PEN (2008) see all
Genres: Literary Fiction
Novels
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Books containing stories by Peter Ho Davies

Charlie Chan Is Dead 2 (2004)
At Home in the World: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction
(Charlie Chan Is Dead, book 2)
edited by
Jessica Hagedorn

The Best American Short Stories 2001 (2001)
(Best American Short Stories)
edited by
Katrina Kenison and Barbara Kingsolver

The Best American Short Stories 1996 (1996)
(Best American Short Stories)
edited by
Katrina Kenison and John Edgar Wideman
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Awards
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Peter Ho Davies recommends

Bitter Texas Honey (2025)
Ashley Whitaker
"Bitter Texas Honey is a remarkable debut. What sets up as a wryly comic kunstlerroman - 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Republican' (in the comparatively 'innocent' days of Mitt Romney's nomination) - deepens into an affecting story of loss and addiction. Joan is by turns feckless and funny, knowing and naive, but always utterly human in all her messy contradictions. Best of all, Whitaker not only pivots from hilarity to heartbreak, but manages to build to a close that is - magically - both at once (fittingly reflective of her bitter-sweet title)."

Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine (2025)
Callie Collins
"Walk Softly On This Heart of Mine marks a brilliant debut. Collins is a natural story-teller, inhabiting voices and settings with preternatural grace and intimacy. There's a hard-luck humanity and down-home soulfulness to this evocation of Texas life that puts me in mind of Larry McMurtry."

The Volcano Daughters (2024)
Gina María Balibrera
"A haunting (and haunted) debut, The Volcano Daughters is a dark marvel of a book, at once lush and stark, mythic and earthy. Balibrera's fusion of history and legend, puts me in mind of a young Isabel Allende."
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