I’m David Perry, a writer, editor and teacher with over two decades of experience in and out of academia. I’ve been living and working in Shanghai on and off–mostly on–for nearly 20 years. In 2022, my wife, the artist Monika Lin, and our daughter established a new home in Philadelphia, where I now spend most of my time when not in Shanghai. I’ve also lived in New York, Kansas City, Iowa City, Berlin, San Cristóbal de las Casas and the US Virgin Islands, among other places.

I teach in the Writing Program at NYU Shanghai where, in addition to teaching core academic writing and research courses, I have played a key role in the development of NYU Shanghai’s Creative Writing Minor and related programming, including ongoing curation of the university’s Literary Reading Series, which has welcomed over 50 writers and literary translators who have read from their work and led student workshops.

Since earning my MFA in Translation from from the University of Iowa’s Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, I’ve also taught creative writing, composition, literature and magazine production courses at NYU Shanghai, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, the Kansas City Art Institute, St. John’s University and the University of Iowa.

Poetry, translation, editing and critical writing

I’m a poet, with two collections, Range Finder and Expat Taxes, to my name, along with two chapbooks, Knowledge Follows and New Years, and a modest slew of poems in various magazines and journals. I also have written some book and art reviews, criticism and scholarly articles. My translation of the Shanghai-based poet Han Bo’s poem cycle 中东铁路 / Zhongdong tielu appeared in the spring of 2019 as The China Eastern Railway, a chapbook produced in collaboration with Monika Lin as part of our Seaweed Salad Editions project, for which I have edited Matt Turner’s new translations of Lu Xun’s 野草/Ye cao, published in 2020 as Weeds, and Ghosts City Sea, a collection of Wang Yin’s poetry translated by Andrea Lingenfelter. Presently, I’m working on n Lines & Counting (alternately Changing Lines), a digital poetry and poetics project.

For a working list of publications and links, including recent academic journal articles, go here or check my blog, Pyramid News Scheme.

Consulting: Digital and print writing, editorial and project management

Contact me at dchopas [ a t ] gmail with inquiries.