Huang Xiang was born in Hunan Province in China in 1941.
Huang began writing poems in the 1950s. In 1978, he founded Enlightenment, China’s first underground writers’ society during this era, and started a literary magazine with the same title. From 1959 to 1997, Huang was incarcerated six times and spent a total of 12 years in jail. He continued to write even though he was tortured for his work, which was completely banned.
He has lived in exile in the United States since 1997. Huang has published poems and essays, and a bilingual edition of his Out of Communist China was published in 2003.
He currently lives in Pittsburgh where he is the writer-in-residence for Cities of Asylum/Pittsburgh.