Additional Information
YANG LIAN
Yang Lian (*1955) is a Chinese poet who lives in London (UK) and Berlin (Germany). He published 15 volumes of poetry, including Yi (2002), Where the Sea Stands Still (1999), Concentric Circles (2005), Riding Pisces (2008), Lee Valley Poems (2009), Narrative Poem (2016), Anniversary Snow (2019) and A Tower Built Downwards(2023). His works have been translated into more than 30 languages.
Amount Yang Lian’s other prizes, he won the inaugural Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation in 2021, Premio Sulmona (Italy) in 2019, NordSud International Prize for Literature (Italy) and Janus Pannonius International Poetry Grand (Hungary) in 2018, English PEN Award in 2017, Pacific International Poetry Prize (Taiwan) in 2016, Capri International Poetry Prize in 2014, and International Nonino Prize in 2012.
His works have been reviewed as “like MacDiarmid meets Rilke with Samurai sword drawn!” by Scotsman and “one of the most representative voices of Chinese literature”, and he was considered “one of the great world poets of our era”.
YOYO
YoYo is a fiction writer, a painter and a guest professor of Shantou University, Guangdong Province, China. She was born in the Western China, and worked as an arts editor in Chinese Theater Publishing House before left China at 1988. She started her literary writings after left China and published 9 collections of Novelettes and 1 Novel in China, Taiwan and overseas. Two of her fictions have been translated into English, which titled Ghost Tide published by Fourth Estate, part of HapperCollins (2005), it was reviewed as “a true literature” by the well-known Australian writer Nicolas Jose. The other was titled One Man’s Decision to Become a Tree published by PalmArtPress in Berlin, Germany (2023).
YoYo has been a witness of the whole history of Contemporary Chinese literature since the begging of 1980s, her elegant and experimental works were inspired by the crazy but extremely complex Chinese reality. She is also a self-educated artist, her paintings were exhibited in many countries and collected by hundreds of institutions and people and she won the special prize for foreign artists in the 46th International arts exhibition in Sulmona, Italy in 2018. YoYo has been invited to many literary and arts foundations such like Berlin DAAD, Yaddo (USA) and Schloss Solitude (Germany). She been teaching in Eton College in Windsor, SOAS of Uni. of London, University of Sydney and Auckland, New Zealand. She lives in Berlin and London as a free artist now.
BRIAN HOLTON
Brian Holton has won prizes for his poetry and for his translations in Scots and English: he and Yang Lian won the 2021 Sarah McGuire Prize for Anniversary Snow. He taught Chinese and translation in the UK and Hong Kong, and has appeared at festivals and lectured in many countries.
