The Bookworm International Literary Festival, Beijing
Sunday 10 March 7:00pm CST
The Future of the Novel
Keynote by: Li Er. Panel discussion with A.D. Miller & Zhu Wen.
Author Biographies:
Novelist and short story writer Li Er was born 1966 in Henan Province. He is the author of five story collections, two novels and approximately 50 novellas and short stories. His work appears regularly in Zuojia, Shouhuo, Renmin Wenxue and a variety of other mainland literary journals. German Chancellor Angela Merkel famously gave the German translation of his novel Cherry on a Pomegranate Tree as a gift to Premier Wen Jiabao. His novels The Magician of 1919 and Truth and Variations, about the mired physical and psychological circumstances confronting revolutionary poet Ge Ren in the 1930s and 1940s are now available in English.
A.D. Miller was born in London in 1974. After studying literature at Cambridge and Princeton, he began writing travel pieces about America. Returning to London, he worked as a television producer before joining The Economist. Currently the magazine’s Britain editor, Miller also served as the magazine’s Moscow correspondent. He is the author of the acclaimed family history The Earl of Petticoat Lane. His first novel Snowdrops, a riveting story of erotic obsession, self-deception and moral free-fall set in post-communist Moscow, was one of the most successful debut novels in 2011, and was shortlisted for numerous literary awards including the Man Booker Prize, the Los Angles Times Book Awards and the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. He lives in London with his wife Emma, daughter Milly and son Jacob.
Zhu Wen was born in Fujian Province in 1967 and spent his childhood in Jiangsu. After graduating from Dongnan University with a degree in engineering, he worked for five years in a thermal power plant (a subject he later revisited in the short story “Ah, Xiao Xie”). He began publishing his poetry in 1989. In 1994, Zhu Wen left his day job to become a full-time writer. Since then, he has published six collections of novellas and short stories, two collections of poetry and one novel. He first gained fame with his 1995 short story collection “I Love Dollars.” Zhu Wen is also an accomplished screenwriter and director: his directorial debut Seafood won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Venice Film Festival, and his second film South of the Clouds was awarded the NETPAC Prize at the 2004 Berlin Film Festival. He currently lives in Beijing.