Shanghai
writer Xiao Bai has become the second Rewi Alley Fellow at the Michael King
Writers Centre in Devonport.
The
fellowship is part of a writers’ exchange with China and is organised in partnership
with the NZ China Friendship Association. Xiao Bai will spend two months in New
Zealand working on his own writing projects, meeting the local literary
community and getting a taste of life here.
Xiao
Bai has written two novels, two anthologies of essays, Erotic Hamlet and
Acting vs Peeping, and a
novella. His most recent novel French
Concession, set in 1930s Shanghai, has just been published in English by
HarperCollins.
He also writes film scripts and has worked as a picture editor with the
Shanghai Translation Publishing House, including on the latest Chinese edition
of American author and literary theorist Susan Sontag's On Photography.
The
Rewi Alley Fellowship is sponsored by the Deng Fund and is part of a reciprocal
agreement with the Shanghai Writers’ Association, the New Zealand China
Friendship Society and the Michael King Writers’ Centre.
The
agreement allows for a writers’ exchange between Shanghai and New Zealand. Last
year, New Zealand novelist Alison Wong, who currently lives in Australia, spent
two months in Shanghai as part of the Shanghai International Writers’
Programme.
The
Rewi Alley Fellowship provides an opportunity for a writer from Shanghai to have
time to work and to experience life in New Zealand. The first Rewi Alley Fellow
Huo Yan completed a novella while she held the residency, which has since been
translated into English. A print publication of the novella, which is a story
about life for Chinese immigrants, is being planned.
Xiao
Bai says he has been busy writing at least 2,000 words a day at the writers’
centre. As well as his own writing
projects, he hopes to find out about the New Zealand writing scene.
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