Our Deputy Director, Daniel Tam-Claiborne, recently took a four-month sabbatical to serve as an artist-in-residence at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel. During that time, Daniel and his family relocated across the globe, immersed in a colorful world of cultural creativity and global artistry. Keep reading for Daniel's reflections on his experience exploring AAPI storytelling in China and beyond!

From January to May, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to take a four-month sabbatical in Shanghai, where I served as an artist-in-residence at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel. Located in what is considered one of Shanghai's most iconic landmarks, at the corner of East Nanjing Road and the world-famous Bund, the residency brings together eighteen artists from around the world, working in mediums as diverse as visual art, sculpture, installation, and illustration. 

The residency is sponsored by the Swatch Group, one of the world’s largest watch manufacturers, and was celebrating its 15th anniversary during my stay. The residency provides studio space, accommodation, and an environment designed to foster experimentation, dialogue, and cross-cultural exchange, especially encouraging residents to engage deeply with both their own creative practice and the cultural life of Shanghai. 

Having mostly considered the creative work I hoped to undertake prior to the residency, the idea of living amongst a creative community only became clear to me after I arrived. I loved meeting my fellow artists and being part of such a warm, supportive, and vibrant community.

During my residency, I focused on my novel-in-progress, Kismet. Building on questions of migration, transnational identity, and cultural memory explored in my debut novel, Transplants (Simon & Schuster, 2025), Kismet examines the personal and political aftermath of post-9/11 New York through the story of Gabriel Bernstein, a mixed-race Korean American Jew with a rare condition that grants him near-total recall while impairing his ability to form new memories. 

Shanghai proved to be an incredibly vibrant and dynamic backdrop for my creative process. It served as the inspiration for a chapter that details the experience of a Chinese American character who chooses to relocate and live and work in Shanghai. Moreover, the residency provided a rare opportunity to devote sustained attention to the manuscript.

Before my Swatch residency, the project was in its early stages. I’d written a complete outline of the novel but had only written a full draft of one of the eleven chapters. Thanks to the Swatch residency, I was able to undertake a lot of research while in Shanghai. Through readings, workshops, discussions, and informal gatherings, I met writers, translators, editors, publishers, and cultural organizers whose work spans national and linguistic boundaries. These conversations offered valuable insight into Shanghai’s contemporary literary landscape and highlighted the vital role that independent literary organizations play in creating spaces for dialogue, experimentation, and community.

The sabbatical also coincided with the publication and international outreach surrounding Transplants. While based in Shanghai, I was able to travel throughout Greater China to participate in literary events and conversations about the novel. In Shanghai, I spoke with readers and students at New York University Shanghai, discussing the book’s themes of migration, family, and belonging. In Beijing, I joined a reading and conversation hosted by Yale Center Beijing, where discussions centered on transnational identity and the evolving relationship between Asia and the Asian diaspora.

I also traveled to Hong Kong to participate in the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, where I discussed Transplants with readers from across the region. The festival provided a valuable opportunity to engage with audiences whose own experiences of migration, cultural hybridity, and global citizenship echoed many of the questions explored in the novel, as well as hear from world-renowned authors including Hernan Diaz, Amitav Ghosh, Anyan Hu, and Bonnie Tsui on their latest works and creative processes.

Another highlight was visiting Nanjing, a UNESCO City of Literature, where I had the chance to experience firsthand a city that has long occupied a significant place in China's literary and intellectual history. Spending time in Nanjing underscored the importance of literary institutions and cultural networks in fostering dialogue across communities and generations, themes that were echoed throughout my travels and engagements during the sabbatical.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the sabbatical was the opportunity to move between artistic and literary circles, discovering unexpected connections between visual art, fiction, translation, and cultural history. The Swatch Art Peace Hotel Artist Residency supported my growth as a writer immensely, by providing me with a vital training ground for my intellectual and artistic development as well as the confidence that these stories are worth telling.

After having lived for many years in China and given the fact that most of my writing is either set in China or centers on the Chinese diaspora, it was a joy to get to return to China after seven years to create a more immersive backdrop for my novels and the characters who populate them. I especially cherished the opportunity to be there with my wife and daughter for the first time! 

The experience affirmed Serica Initiative’s commitment to fostering cross-cultural understanding and demonstrated the enduring importance of storytelling as a means of building dialogue across languages, nations, and lived experiences. I remain humbled and grateful to have been selected for the program and to Serica for the opportunity to take this time abroad!

Read more of Daniel's writing in his highly-acclaimed debut novel, Transplants: a harrowing and poignant novel following two young women in pursuit of kinship and self-discovery who yearn to survive in a world that doesn’t know where either of them belong.