EARNING SPURS

estern Writers of America has honored Lynne Yuan as a Spur Award finalist in its short nonfiction category for “China’s Lost Women in the Far West,” which ran in (readable online at ). Yuan, who grew up in Shanghai and greater New York City, is fluent in Mandarin and tapped Chinese-language sources for her article about frontier-era Chinese women, who often worked as slaves or prostitutes and seldom got a square deal from either men or the law. “Thanks to [special contributor] John Koster and for giving me the opportunity to write,” says Yuan, a Seton Hall University undergraduate. “It was fun to blend Chinese and English narratives together to tell a story, and I really learned and grew a lot from the experience.”