Li Ang, a prominent woman writer from Taiwan, has made tremendous contribution to women’s literature around the world with her persistent, in-depth investigation of the intriguing intertwining of gender and politics in social life and literary creation. Beginning her writing career at the age of sixteen, she has published nearly twenty novels including collections of short stories. Many of her major works have been translated in different languages, published world-wide, reviewed by The New York Times and other major newspapers in many countries, and made into films and TV series. In 2004, Li Ang was awarded “The Chevalier de L’ordre des Arts des Lettres” by the French Ministry of Culture of Communication as an acknowledgement of her literary achievement.

Born in 1952, Li Ang grew up in Lu-Kang, a historical town in the central part of Taiwan. She published her first short story “Flower Season” at the age of sixteen, and  “Butcher’s Wife” in 1983, which established Li Ang as one of the most important writers in Taiwan.

While gender politics surfaces strongly in her early writings, Li Ang began to examine the intertwining of gender and politics in the reconstruction of historical narratives after the lifting of martial law in Taiwan in 1987 with the publication of The Incense Burner of Lust (1997), Autobiography/A Novel (2000), The Visible Ghost (2003). These works open up new dimension of gender writing in literature as Li Ang combine critical reflections on postcolonial politics with gender politics to examine the questions of women in Taiwan. Another topic she has recently  focused is on food, including Menu Desgustation, The Taiwanese/Chinese Lover.

Most recently her novel The Lost Garden was translated by Sylvia Li-chun Lin with Howard Goldblatt (Columbia University Press, 2015). Balestier Press will publish the English translation of her new work  Possession.