Maxine Hong Kingston is the author of The Woman Warrior, China Men, Tripmaster Monkey, and The Fifth Book of Peace, among other works. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award, and the Emerson-Thoreau Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton, and the National Medal of Arts from President Obama. She is a Living Treasure of Hawai’i, a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, and lives in Oakland, California.