Yang Lian

Was born in Switzerland in 1955, and grew up in Beijing. His poems became well known and influential inside and outside of China in the 1980s, especially when his sequence ‘Norilang’ was published in 1983. Yang Lian has published thirteen collections of poems, two collections of prose and one selection of essays in Chinese. His work has also been translated into more than twenty languages. His work has been reviewed as "one of the most representative voices of Chinese literature" and "one of the great world poets of our era". In 2017, ‘Narrative Poem’, Yang Lian’s autographical book-length poem was prized with UK Poetry Book Society’s recommended translation. It also won the English PEN Award. In 2016, Yang Lian was awarded the 2016 Pacific International Poetry Prize in Taiwan. In 2015, Yang Lian won the Li Bai Nomination Poetry Prize; Zuo Pin (Works) Magazine’s Prize for Sequence; The First Long Poem Prize (Fushan City, Guang Dong, China); Great Kunlun Cultural Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Poetry. In 2014 Yang Lian won Capri International Poetry Prize. In 2013 Yang Lian’s “Concentric Circles Trilogy” (Yi, Concentric Circles, Narrative Poem) won the first “Tianduo” prize for the long poems. In 2012 Yang Lian was awarded Nonino International Literature Prize in Italy (the juries were presided by V S Naipaul). Yang Lian was also awarded the Flaiano International Poetry Prize (Italy, 1999) and his Where the Sea Stands Still: New Poems won Poetry Books Society’s Recommended Translation (UK, 1999). Yang Lian has been elected a board member of PEN International in 2007, and re-elected in 2011. Since 2014, he was invited to be the writer in residency and lecture professor in Shantou University. In 2013, He has been invited to become a member of The Norwegian Academy for Literature and Freedom of Expression.