XU XI SHOULD HAVE BEEN A CAT , with nine instead of just one life. She is the author of five novels, seven collections of short fiction & essays, and one memoir. But for 18 years, she also had a parallel career in international business and held marketing and management positions in Asia and the U.S.. In 1998, following the release of her third book, she finally surren - dered to the writing life. Xu is now Faculty Co-Director of the new International MFA in Creative Writing & Literary Transla - tion at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Xu will share her experience of negotiating these multiple transcultural and transnational lives. How do you reconcile corporate “hatchet lady” with a humanist’s compassion? Or the filial Asian daughter with the globalized feminist gaze? Or an ambitious careerist with the private, even reclusive artist? She will speak specifically about her essay, “To Loaf, or How Not to Write a CV” from her forthcoming essay collec - tion This Fish is Fowl: Essays of Being . The essay is available for download on the English and Media Studies webpage and also in locations around campus, as part of the One Bentley One Story project, which aims to make one short story available to the entire Bentley community to remind us of the individual and communal joys of reading.