This fall, the Department of East Asian Studies, thanks to the generous support of the China Institute, is pleased to host its first writer-in-residence, Ms. Jing (Joyce) Zhang. Ms. Zhang, writing under the pen name Xiao Yi, is one of China's most prominent young novelists, and has generated critical acclaim, and controversy, for the treatment of such topics as female sexuality and domestic violence in her novels.
Ms. Zhang graduated from university in 1996 with a degree in business and then studied law for two years before turning to writing in 1999. Her first novel, Blue Nails, was published in 2001, and since then she has published five more novels, one volume of short fiction, and one collection of essays. She has also published twelve volumes of translations into Chinese, among them L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (2002), and the American feminist writer Betty Friedan's book The Second Stage (2007). As well as working as a professional translator, she has served as an editor at the Chinese Youth Publishing House. Currently she works as a full-time freelancer and divides her time between Beijing and Nanjing.
While in residence at Alberta, Ms. Zhang will be collecting materials for translation and working on her own writing, as well as working with the department's graduate students, and delivering two public lectures.