11:15-11:30 Q&A

All writers

Poet
Poetry Editor
Translator

Mr Lo Chih Cheng
罗智成先生

Poet
Writer
Cultural Critic
Media Worker

Ko Ko Thett (Myanmar)

Poet, Poetry Editor and Translator

Ko Ko Thett is a poet by choice and Burmese by chance. His poetic career was discreetly launched with the publication of a samizdat poetry chapbook at Yangon Institute of Technology in 1994. After he left the country in 1997, Thett began writing in English. He has won a PEN translation award for the seminal anthology Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets, which he co-edited with James Byrne. His collection of poems The Burden of Being Burmese (Zephyr, 2015) is listed on World Literature Today’s Nota Benes. After a whirlwind tour of Asia, Europe and North America for about 20 years—Thett happily resettled in Sagaing in central Myanmar in 2017. He is an Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa, and country editor for Myanmar at Poetry International in the Netherlands. He writes in both Burmese and English.

Nguyen Bao Chan (Vietnam)

Poet and Television Editor

A member of the Vietnam Writers Association, Nguyen Bao Chan trained as a cinema scenarist at the Hanoi Cinema and Theatre University, and earned her Bachelor of Arts in1991. She currently works for Vietnam Television as an editor in the areas of Arts and Culture. Her major publications are Burned River (Publisher of Vietnam Writers Association, 1994), which received  an Award from the Vietnamese Literary and Arts Union in 1994, Barefoot in Winter (Youth Publications, 1999), and Thorns in Dreams (Vietnamese-English bilingual edition, The Gioi Publisher, 2010). Her works are also included in The Defiant Muse: Vietnamese Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present (Women’s Publishing House, Hanoi, 2007) and many other poetry anthologies. She has read her poetry at literary festivals in Vietnam and abroad, including the prestigious international Poetry Festival of Medellin in Colombia (2008), Poetry Parnassus Festival in London, United Kingdom (2012), Festival International des Poètes en Val de Marne in Paris, France (2013), and the Melbourne Writers Festival in Melbourne, Australia (2015).

Lo Chih Cheng (Taiwan)

Poet, Writer, Cultural Critic, and Media Worker

Born in Taipei, Lo Chih Cheng graduated from the Department of Philosophy of National Taiwan University. Later he received an M.A. in East Asian Studies and completed the coursework for the Ph.D. programme at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Lo assumed various editorial positions at newspapers, magazines and publishing companies and became the publisher of several publishing companies. He also served in some official positions such as Commissioner of the Department of Information in the Taipei city government and Director of the Kwang Hua Information and Cultural Center (Hong Kong). He is currently engaged in the cultural and creative industries.

Lo has published poems, prose, critical essays and a photo collection. His literary works, which continue to influence younger generations of poets, are famous for their philosophical inquiries, surprising imagery, lyrical syntax and original insight.

Yu Xiang (Mainland China)

Poet

A key figure of the post-70s generation of Chinese poets, Yu Xiang is the author of multiple collections, including To the One Who Writes Poetry Tonight (The Atypical, 2012), Surging toward Them (Chongqing University Press, 2015), Sorceress (China Youth Publishing, 2015), Sunlight Shines Where It’s Needed (Showwe, 2015), D’autres choses (Caractères, 2016), and Poem in a Pocket (Shandong Literature and Arts, 2016). Her first bilingual volume I Can Almost See the Clouds of Dust (Zephyr/The Chinese University Press, 2013; translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain) was longlisted for the 2014 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. A new bilingual chapbook Trace was released in 2017. Yu Xiang’s honors include the Rougang Poetry Prize, the Yulong Poetry Prize, the Cultural China Annual Poetry Award, and the Chinese Media Literature “Poet of the Year” Award. As a visual artist, she has exhibited oil paintings at various venues.