Christine Ha, the writer

July 9, 2013, by

christine-1Christine Ha would always take the desk nearest the door — farthest, that is, from our professor. This was in 2009. We were enrolled in an Emily Dickinson class at the University of Houston. She spent most of the three hours typing — or hiding, maybe, on the other side of her laptop. Of course, there were some loudmouths who tended to dominate, but Christine rarely voiced her take on the few cryptic lines in front of us.

And I guess I was living under the assumption that only loudmouths are the right kind of people for reality television. Because when I heard that Christine would be taking a leave from the UH Creative Writing Program to compete on something called Master Chef, it struck me as — well, unlikely.  Continue reading