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February 2020: Dorothy Tse 謝曉虹

Dorothy Tse is an award-winning writer from Hong Kong. She has published three story collections in Chinese and one in English, Snow and Shadow (translated by Nicky Harman). She was co-founder of the Fleurs des lettres literary journal and currently teaches literature and creative writing at Hong Kong Baptist University. She was our featured author of the month back in 2015, when she also kindly provided the text for our first translation competition, and her story ‘The Man Who Ate Everything‘ was featured in our special edition of Stand magazine, translated by Natascha Bruce.

We are delighted that not only is Dorothy our featured author this month, but she is also our very first author in residence here in Leeds, alongside our first translator in residence, Natascha Bruce! We have a number of events running, so have a look at our Events page to see what's going on.

You can read the story 'Dark Things' in Chinese and in English translation. The story was written for Antipodean China: Reflections of Literary Exchange, Giramondo Publishing in Australia, forthcoming in 2020, and we'd like to thank author, translator, and publisher for giving us permission to feature it here.

A number of Dorothy's stories have been published online, including 'Regurgitated', translated by Karen Curtis, and 'January: Bridges', translated by Nicky Harman, both of which were part of the Read Paper Republic series.

There's an interesting review of Snow and Shadow here, by Camila M. Santos for Words Without Borders.

'Like the magical realists, Tse's writing interweaves the magical and the mundane. Universal laws, familiar logic, or a linear construct of time will not help readers interpret the events in Snow and Shadow.' - Camila M. Santos

You can also read an interview with Dorothy and Natascha here, discussing Dorothy's poetry and Natascha's translation. Dorothy's poem “Cloth Birds”,  translated by Natascha, was one of four winners of Words Without Borders' poetry in translation contest in 2019, presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets.