The Writing Chinese project is delighted to welcome Taiwanese author Shih Chiung-yu to Leeds, to discuss her work and her new novel Masked Dolls, recently published by Balestier Press.

The talk will be followed by a Q&A and refreshments. There will also be a bookstall from Blackwells Books on contemporary Chinese fiction.

All welcome!

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Shih Chiung-Yu was born in Taiwan in 1968. She grew up in Taitung, a village of aboriginal Taiwan. Her writings involve stories of conflicts: conflicts between nations, conflicts between generations, conflicts between genders, conflicts between the East and the West. conflicts between racial prejudices. She has been a writer, essayist, news reporter and documentary filmmaker for many years. Awards she won include the China Times Literature Award, and the United Daily News Literature Award.

In Masked Dolls (translated by Wang Xinlin and Poppy Toland), an Australian woman, burdened by the original sin of her Caucasian ancestors, and a Taiwanese woman, haunted by the memories of 100 years of conflict in her homeland, meet as backpackers while travelling in South Korea. As they live and travel together, two women in flight, one from the East and the other from the West, struggle to find a way out of their personal dilemmas.