Reading and conversation with award-winning author Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (楊双子) and translator Lin King (金翎).
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
Kaplan Hall, Rm A51
How can a Taiwanese novel incorporate historical materials from its decades under Japanese colonial rule? How does two women’s travelogue become a work of fiction? This talk will examine Taiwan Travelogue’s use of a “Shōwa Taiwan Railway Gourmet Tour” as its storytelling framework, covering the novel’s early inspirations, conceptual development, research, fieldwork, archives-building, story conception, and writing process.
How can historical documents from the Japanese colonial period be material for nove writing? How do women’s travels in history become the subject of fictional storytelling? Using Taiwan Travelogue as an example, this lecture will cover the journey of creating the “Shōwa period Taiwan Railway Gourmet Tour,” from initial inspiration, concept development, research, and fieldwork to organization, story structure, and the final writing process.
Author Yáng Shuang-zi whose real name is Yang Jo-Tzu, is a versatile writer from Taichung, Taiwan. She dabbles in various forms, including fiction, essays, manga scripts, and literary criticism. In 2020, she was named one of the Rising Stars of the Twenty-First Century by Wenshun magazine and was selected by Unitas magazine as one of the Twenty Most Promising Young Novelists. In 2021, she became the youngest-ever nominee for the United Daily News Literary Award. In 2022, Wenshun magazine again recognized Yáng as a Representative Author of Twenty-First Century Taiwanese Popular Literature.
Her notable works include the novel The Season When Flowers Bloom (花開時節) in 2017, the short story collection Blossoming Girls of Gorgeous Island (花開少女華麗島) in 2018, and the novel Taiwan Travelogue (臺灣漫遊錄) in 2020. Taiwan Travelogue received Taiwan’s highest literary honor—the Golden Tripod Award. In 2024, its Japanese translation won Japan’s Best Translation Award, while the English version earned the National Book Award for Translated Literature in the United States.
Translator Lin King is a writer and translator based in Taipei and New York. Her fiction has appeared in One Story, Boston Review, and Joyland among others, and has received the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She is the translator of The Boy from Clearwater by Yu Pei-Yun and Zhou Jian-Xin, as well as Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, winner of the 2024 National Book Award in Translated Literature.
See more about the book at Graywolf Press.
Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies, Asia Pacific Center