Gracie's An'an

Amidst the flow of consciousness,

exploring life, memory, existence, and beauty.

Love is dangerous, didn't I know that? But isn't safety just as dangerous?

Even at this very moment, I am forgetting.

And those things like music, wind, and windows,

they no longer hold any meaning of memory for you and me.

If only I knew what wasn't important.

Xiao Yi-Hui is a familiar name in the Taiwanese literary scene. Since high school, he has won countless awards for his poetry, essays, novels, and plays, including five awards from the Lin Rong-San Literary Award (two first prizes and three honorable mentions). At the same time, he also writes critiques, reports, music, and copywriting for advertisements, and has produced and written many popular interview articles.

However, the name Xiao Yi-Hui has always remained somewhat mysterious.

Perhaps it's due to his scarce published works—to date, only two essay collections, "1700 Ways to Approach" and "Sophie's Spin," both from 2017, along with his self-published collection of micro-short stories, "The Obscure Apple," and the limited-edition poetry collection "Jacqueline, the Nasal Girl" from 2019. After that, apart from a few interviews collected in "Wrinkles," we mostly encounter Xiao Yi-Hui's presence on social media, in the media, or in the recommendation prefaces of other authors' works.

What does such a person think about?

After a six-year hiatus from publishing a personal work, Xiao Yi-Hui, with one stroke, lays bare the myriad thoughts in his mind.

"Gracie's An An" originated from Xiao Yi-Hui's free writing project, a continuous, ninety-thousand-character piece of prose without chapters or a central theme. In the book, poetic and essayistic sentences flow ceaselessly, reality and metaphor intertwine, and he ponders various concepts in an internal monologue, sometimes discussing life and interpersonal relationships, sometimes analyzing art, literature, or writing, and also deeply exploring the passage of time, self, and existence. Amidst the flow of consciousness, with the rhythm of memory and sound, beginnings and endings blur, and yesterday and today congeal within it, becoming preserved time.