University of Iowa International Writing Program cofounder Hualing Engle dies

IOWA CITY — Six decades after arriving in Iowa — where she would cofound the University of Iowa’s renowned International Writing Program, fortifying Iowa City’s writing reputation by welcoming 1,600-plus writers like herself from more than 160 countries — Hualing Nieh Engle on Monday died.

She was 99 and passed away in the Iowa City home she once shared with her late husband and former Iowa Writers’ Workshop Director Paul Engle, who died in 1991.

“After leaving the mainland in 1949, I lived in Taiwan for fifteen years and never had a glimpse of snow,” Hualing wrote in her 2004 memoir, Three Lives. “I came to Iowa in 1964, the first snowfall came at night, blanketing the ground. I went out with friends and we sunk our feet in the thick snow on the sidewalk and shouted in delight.”

In that memoir, Hualing wrote about the night in Taiwan in 1963 when Paul — while scouting for literary talent in Asia — turned to her during dinner and said, “Would you like to go to Iowa? I read your stories in translation.” Hualing said no, that she had two children and couldn’t get an “exit permit” due to her connection with a magazine that had been shut down by the government.

Ten months later, though, she made it to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop — arriving during a typical Iowa fall, which she said in her memoirs, “takes you by surprise.”

“The golden tints of fall drips on the branches, a little every day, day by day, tantalizingly slow,” she wrote. “But suddenly it seems that she can’t hold it back any longer and splashes out an extravaganza of gold and crimson. As you lift your eyes, you are startled and can’t help exclaiming: Oh, so beautiful!”

Though Hualing was a published Chinese novelist and editor before her Iowa entree, she continued to mine her literary depths at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and — after earning her Master of Fine Arts in 1966 — pondered ways to extend the literary magic of the American Midwest to more.

So in 1967, she collaborated on a new UI-based arts residency program for international writers with her would-be husband Paul Engle — fresh off directing the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for 24 years, from 1941 to 1965.

The International Writing Program, with support from the U.S. Department of State and other national arts organizations, aimed to bring dozens of international writers to campus every fall to write, network, speak, and learn.

And five years after Paul and Hualing married in 1971, the couple was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for their efforts to promote cultural diplomacy.

“Hualing was a true citizen of the world and will be mourned and remembered all around it,” Loren Glass, chair of the UI Department of English, told the university this week in response to her passing, calling Paul and her relationship “a marriage of true minds, a professional and personal partnership which sustained both and enabled them to build Iowa City into a central node in the networks of world literature."

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‘I could try, but will I?’

Hualing — born nearly a century ago on Jan. 11, 1925 in Wuhan, Hubei, China — grew up amid civil unrest and war, losing her father when she was 11 to execution by the Communist Red Army. She earned a degree in English from National Central University in China in 1948, and the next year moved with her family to Taiwan following the communist takeover.

In Taiwan, she became the literary editor and an editorial board member of the Free China Journal — a liberal periodical that produced its first issue Dec. 20, 1949 and its last on Sept. 1, 1960 upon forced government shut down.

She taught creative writing at Taipai’s major universities, becoming the first on faculty to teach creative writing in Chinese. There, Hualing published a novel and several short story collections before meeting her future husband in 1963.

In Paul Engle’s own words about his meeting Hualing, he wrote in a piece he titled “Chance” that, “She liked me a little. She loathed me a lot” after a rocky first interaction.

“I looked her straight in the eyes and asked, ‘Will you try to like me?’ It was a bold remark to speak to a Chinese woman, but I've always been blunt (and suffered for it),” Engle wrote. “Hualing looked at me, smiling with those steady, bright eyes. ‘It wouldn't be easy.’

‘Easy things aren't worth doing,’ I whispered. ‘You could always try to forget our first meeting and hope for a better one.’ ‘I could hope. I could try, but will I? We may never see each other again. Maybe that would be good.’ ‘Maybe for you. Not for me,’ I replied.”

The couple married eight years after that encounter and four years after welcoming their first cohort of writers to their new International Writing Program. The same year they were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Hualing in 1976 published her second novel, “Mulberry and Peach,” which later was translated into English and won an American Book Award in 1990.

‘Constant mirth, pleasure, and insight’

She and Paul codirected the IWP until he retired in 1977, when she took over as sole director until retiring in 1988. The couple also co-taught a translation workshop from 1975 to 1988 — editing 11 volumes of poetry in translation.

The University of Iowa’s current director of translation programs Aron Aji said, “It was no accident that the first translation workshop in the English-speaking world was offered at Iowa.

“Hualing, translator of many great works into and from the Chinese, knew the significance of translation in the circulation of literature around the world, and was instrumental in injecting this urgent art into the creative DNA of the university.”

Hualing over the years has published many books and stories, received several honorary doctorate degrees, achieved a governor’s award for distinguished service to the arts, and landed a medal of merit from Poland’s Ministry of Culture, according to UI. In 2008, she was inducted into the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame; and in 2012, the university awarded her its International Impact Award.

“Nieh Hualing Engle was not only an extraordinary writer, translator, and visionary administrator, but also a generous guide and friend to me from the day I arrived in Iowa City,” current International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill said.

"She introduced me to her first homes, China and Taiwan, and made my tenure in her third home, Iowa City, a source of constant mirth, pleasure, and insight. She brightened the world for writers everywhere.”

In her memoirs, Hualing shared her feelings and her late husband’s thoughts on the UI writing programs and Iowa. Quoting Paul, she wrote:

“The important thing is that in this university and in this pleasant city, I felt that to be a writer, a poet, was like being an insurance salesman, a clerk in a drugstore, which I had been for years, a filling station operator, a doctor, a dentist, a feed salesman.

“That is to say, a person contributing to the survival of people.”

Having traveled around the globe — to many of the countries that over the years have sent writers to the IWP — Engle wrote, “I prefer the corner of Clinton and Washington streets in Iowa City.”

“Why? Because along the tree-lined street and past the old red brick buildings walked some of the best writers and artists in the USA. They are still walking there.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com