How can historical documents from the Japanese colonial period be material for novel writing?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. A book signing will follow after the Q&A.
The English translation of Yáng Shuāng-zǐ's (楊双子) "Taiwan Travelogue" (臺灣漫遊錄) has made history after it became the latest winner of the U.S. National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2024, making it the first work by a Taiwanese author to receive the honor since the category was established in 1967. Read more in this article.
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (楊双子), whose real name is Yang Ruo-Tzu, is a versatile writer from Taichung, Taiwan. She dabbles in various forms, including fiction, essays, manga, video game 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.
Lin King (金翎) is a writer and translator based in Taipei, Taiwan, and New York. Her writing has appeared in One Story, Boston Review, Joyland, and Far-Near, 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, a novel by Golden Tripod Award winner Yáng Shuāng-zǐ. Her translations from Mandarin and Japanese have appeared in Asymptote, the Margins, and Columbia Journal. Lin holds a BA from Princeton University and an MFA from Columbia University, where she has taught undergraduate writing.
See more about the book at Graywolf Press.