You are warmly invited to attend a seminar on Women Writing China: Female Authors and Chinese Literature, hosted by Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing and Sinoist Books.
The event will take place on 5th February 2021 at 13:00: register for your tickets here or by using the Eventbrite link below.
Featuring Li Juan, an acclaimed Chinese essayist writing from the extreme rurality of the Altay region of Xinjiang, and Christopher Payne, translator of Li Juan’s latest book, we will be discussing Li Juan’s writing, specifically her latest book Distant Sunflower Fields. Charting the lives of three generations of women in her family, Li Juan represents women in a community which is entirely distant from mainstream society; what is it to be a woman living in such a community, and how have her experiences as a woman writer influenced and taken shape in text more broadly? We will be addressing these questions as well as their transmission via translation, addressing the intricacies and challenges of Christopher’s work with Li Juan and her writing.
Featured books:
Li Juan (trans. Christopher Payne), Distant Sunflower Fields (Sinoist Books)
About the speakers
An acclaimed essayist, Li Juan was first published in 1999, and has since written more than ten essay collections. Her work often details her personal experiences of the landscape and Kazakh nomads of Xinjiang’s Altay region. Providing rare insight into the community, her work has been widely praised for its contribution to the genre of narrative non-fiction. Distant Sunflower Fields (trans. Christopher Payne) will be published in 2021 by Sinoist Books.
Associate Chair of English and Chinese Translation at the University of Toronto, Christopher Payne has a background in East Asian Studies, with a particular focus on cultural production from the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Dr Payne has translated authors such as Mai Jia and Jiang Zilong. His academic work can be found in the journals Modern Chinese Literature and Culture and Positions: Asia Critique.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/women-writing-china-outside-society-tickets-136424119213
Photo credit: Xinjuang, by Giggs Huang, Flickr Creative Commons
