Chen Xiwo teaches comparative literature at Fuzhou Normal University and has published seven major novels. Due to his refusal to compromise about the style or content of his writing, it was nearly twenty years before his books could be published in China. In 2010, Asia Sentinel described Chen Xiwo as "one of China’s most outspoken voices on freedom of expression for writers" and published his speech given at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong on September 27, 2010. One recurring theme in Chen’s fiction is the relationship between sexual and social corruption. Perhaps his most famous work, the novella I Love My Mum (遮蔽) explores incest and S&M as metaphors for a dysfunctional society. His works have been nominated for several prizes, and in 2001 he won the Chinese Literature Media Prize for Dissipation (我们的苟且). Today Chen Xiwo is one of contemporary China’s most acclaimed authors. In 2010, an English translation of I Love My Mum was released by Make-Do Publishing. His novel Irritation (抓痒) was published in a French translation by Editions Reflets de Chine (2009).
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Nicky Harman is a UK-based prize-winning literary translator, working from Chinese to English and focusing on contemporary fiction, literary nonfiction, and occasionally poetry, by a wide variety of authors. When not translating, she spends time promoting contemporary Chinese fiction to English-language readers. She volunteers for Paper Republic, a nonprofit registered in the UK, where she is also a trustee. She writes blogs (for instance, the Asian Books Blog), gives talks and lectures, and takes part in literary events and festivals, especially with the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing. She also mentors new translators, teaches summer schools (Norwich, London, Warwick, and Bristol), and judges translation competitions. She tweets, with Helen Wang, as the China Fiction Bookclub @cfbcuk. She taught on the MSc in Translation at Imperial College until 2011 and was co-Chair of the Translators Association (Society of Authors) 2014–2017.
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