ADRIENNE SU, born in Atlanta, Georgia, is a distinguished poet and educator. She earned her BA from Radcliffe College at Harvard University in 1989 and an MFA from the University of Virginia in 1993. Su is the author of five poetry collections: Peach State (2021), Living Quarters (2015), Having None of It (2009), Sanctuary (2006), and Middle Kingdom (1997). Her work has been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and residencies at esteemed institutions such as Yaddo, MacDowell, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and The Frost Place. In 2019, she received a grant from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.
Su's poetry often reflects her experiences as a Chinese-American woman. It explores themes of cultural identity and the interplay between daily life and heritage. Her debut collection, Middle Kingdom, delves into these subjects, negotiating the "slippery, hard-to-read territory between languages, cultures, and identities." In Peach State, she examines the evolution of Chinese-American communities in Atlanta, particularly through the lens of food and its connection to cultural transformation.
In addition to her poetry, Su is a devoted educator, serving as a professor of creative writing and Poet-in-Residence at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, since 2000. She teaches courses in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, with a particular emphasis on writing about food. Her first prose book, Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, a collection of essays on food and poetry, was published in August 2024.
Su's work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Best American Poetry, and her poems have appeared on platforms such as Poetry Daily and Poem-a-Day. Her contributions to literature offer profound insights into the complexities of cultural identity, daily life, and the rich tapestry of the Chinese-American experience.
More on Su and her work may be found on her website.
(Photo credit: Guy Freeman)
A Reflection After the Rain
There are pieces that tell. And there are those rare ones that uncover: lifting a corner of the ordinary to show us how to see again.
In “The Truffled Huts of Spring,” Adrienne Su does just that. With the attentive eye of a gardener and the attuned ear of a poet, she leads us not toward spectacle, but into quiet noticing: those sudden mushroom sightings that seem to arrive from elsewhere, ephemeral as breath. What begins in the backyard becomes a meditation on friendship, memory, Dickinson’s elfin metaphors, and the tender discipline of paying attention.
There is no urgency in this piece, only presence. No claim of dominion over nature, only companionship with it. Even the recipe at the end is more than a conclusion, it is a continuation of the mood: a gesture of warmth that joins the body to the earth, the present to the fleeting.
In a journal that gathers voices across latitudes and lives, Adrienne Su’s essay reminds us that resistance need not always be thunderous. Sometimes it arrives with the hush of fungi after rain.
The Edtior
