Anna Sun

Anna Sun is a scholar, writer, and teacher. As a professor of religious studies, she conducts her research on Confucianism and contemporary Chinese religious experiences. Her first scholarly book is Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities. It has received two book awards: the “Distinguished Book Award” of the Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association, and the “Best First Book in the History of Religion” Award of the American Academy of Religion, both in 2014. Her current book project is entitled The Social Life of Prayer in Contemporary Urban China.

Anna is also a writer of fiction and literary criticism. Her essays on both classical and contemporary Chinese literature have appeared in Paideuma, London Review of Books and The Kenyon Review. Her short fiction has appeared in Harvard Review, and her novel in English, Dreamers of the Absolute, set at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, was published in 2014 by Sylph Editions in London. It was a “Book of the Month” selection of the independent bookstore Brazos in Houston, Texas.

Her first book, The Blue Notebook, a collection of short stories in Chinese, was published in Shanghai in 2001. Her first short story in English, “The Garden,” published in The Harvard Review, came out in the same year. Sun’s first novel in English, Dreamers of the Absolute: A Book of Hours, was published by Sylph Editions in London in 2014. Her latest essay was for The Kenyon Review, entitled “The Diseased Language of Mo Yan.” She is now working on a book on Chinese religion as well as a novel about modern China.