Hua Hsu

Stay True is about a friendship at Berkeley in the nineties, between the son of Taiwanese immigrants who was deep into obscure music and zines and a Japanese American fraternity member who liked Pearl Jam.

Ken was killed in a carjacking during their third year. The book is what Hsu did with twenty-five years of trying to write about it, and it refuses the shape a grief memoir is supposed to have.

It won the Pulitzer for memoir. He writes about music and culture for the New Yorker and teaches at Bard.