Sun board president Max Yeh has lived in Hillsboro, New Mexico, for more than 30 years after retiring from an academic career in literature, art history and critical theory. During this time, he has served as the assistant fire chief and was twice director of the Hillsboro Community Center. He is co-founder of the Hillsboro Library, La Olla, the Hillsboro Common Table, the Arrey Food Pantry and the Percha/Animas Watershed Association. For his work to prevent the reopening of Sierra County’s Copper Flat Mine—a project that threatens to degrade the Animas Creek/lower Rio Grande watershed—the New Mexico Environmental Law Center awarded him the Griff Salisbury Environmental Protection Award in 2018.

Yeh, who was born in China and educated in the United States, taught at the University of California, Irvine, Hobart and William Smith Colleges and New Mexico State University. He has continued his professional activities with papers and talks on art, contemporary fiction and New Mexico water law. He has presented at national conferences at (among other distinguished venues) the University of California, Berkeley, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, University of Southern California, University of Arizona, Smithsonian Institution and Sandia National Laboratories. 

Yeh’s third novel will be published next year. His first novel, “The Beginning of the East,” which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, will be reissued next year.