As the United States and China move toward an expansion of political and economic relations, interest in China and its culture has never been greater. Chinese Writers on Writing makes a contribution in illuminating this corner of the globe through the works of some of its finest writers. With more than half the works appearing in English for the first time, Chinese Writers on Writing features authors such as Mo Yan, whose book Red Sorghum was made into an award-winning movie by the same name; Lu Xun, known as the Chinese George Orwell; and Gao Xingjian, recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. Edited by award-winning poet Arthur Sze, this is the first collection that brings together material by writers reflecting on their work, their processes, and the challenges of writing under China's political system. This is the fifth volume in the highly acclaimed Writer's World Series.
Arthur Sze, one of America's leading poets, is the author of nine books of poetry and translation, most recently
The Ginkgo Light. He is professor emeritus of creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts and was Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is also a celebrated translator and editor of
The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese. His poems have appeared in
the American Poetry Review, the
Boston Review, the
Paris Review, and the
New Yorker. He is the recipient of a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, an American Book Award, and a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Edward Hirsch was born in Chicago and educated both at Grinnell College and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a Ph.D. in folklore. His first collection of poems,
For the Sleepwalkers (1981), received the Academy of American Poets Lavan Younger Poets Award and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award. His second collection,
Wild Gratitude, received the National Book Critics Circle Award. His recent poetry collections include
The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems,
Special Orders,
Lay Back the Darkness,
On Love,
Earthly Measures, and
The Night Parade.
He is also the author of the prose books
The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration,
Responsive Reading, and the national bestseller
How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, which poet Garrett Hongo called "the product of a lifetime of passionate reflection" and "a wonderful book for laureate and layman both." Most recently, Hirsch published Poet's Choice, which collects two years' worth of his weekly essay letters from the
Washington Post Book World.
Hirsch's honors include the Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, the Rome Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2008 he was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and he lives in New York.
