Yan Geling and Lawrence Walker: A Journey Together, in Literature

Yan Geling and Lawrence Walker: A Journey Together, in Literature
嚴歌苓和勞倫斯：他們的芳華

This event is in English.

As Yan Geling often says, her literary career can be divided into three stages. Drawing on a range of classical Chinese and Western literatures discovered in her grandfather and father’s collections, she started writing stories while she was still part of the Art Troupe in the Chinese military. As a young teenager, the experiences performing in the Sichuan-Tibet region and reporting during the Vietnam War provided her with rich materials for her creative writing. Already an award-winning writer in her 20s, she took the opportunity to study for an MFA in Chicago in the late 1980s. That was the period when she started exploring the lived experiences of the Chinese diaspora in her fiction, and her dramatic encounters with the FBI as a result of dating Lawrence, then a US diplomat, were later adapted into her novel Café with No Exit 無出路咖啡館 (2001). Geling’s literary career entered another highly productive phase when she moved to Nigeria with Lawrence in the early 2000s, where she completed the highly popular novel The Ninth Widow 第九個寡婦 (2006) and most of the essays published in her collection African Notes 非洲札記 (2013). Now living in Berlin, Geling keeps a comparative view on language and literature, and still works hard to bring out vivid portrayals of Chinese life from her memory and imagination. Throughout her career, she has had close connections with the film and TV industries in China and the wider Sinophone world, and adapted many of her stories into visual forms, never failing to impress audiences at home and abroad.

In this public event, Geling and Lawrence will be in conversation with Flair Donglai SHI (DPhil in English) to talk about their journey in literature. We will not only bring more spotlight on Geling’s less discussed works, but also focus on how the couple’s transnational and bilingual experiences have shaped their views and practices on fiction writing and translation. We will also continue the topic on media adaptations of literature and the concerns over contemporary Chinese literature’s international visibility and influence.

This event will be of interest to those of you who work on contemporary China, Chinese literature, Chinese diaspora, film studies, gender studies, translation studies, and intercultural communication in general. The conversation will be approximately 30 minutes long, and plenty of time will be given to audience Q & A and discussions. After the event, Geling will stay for a while longer to chat with enthusiastic readers and sign book copies (please bring your own).

Speaker biographies:
Yan Geling
Yan Geling is one the most prominent and widely read authors in mainland China and overseas Chinese communities today. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago. Her short stories and novels, including “Siao Yu 少女小漁”, “Celestial Bath (Xiuxiu the Sent-down Girl) 天浴”, The Flowers of War金陵十三釵, A Woman’s Epic一個女人的史詩, and Criminal Lu Yanshi陸犯焉識, have won numerous awards in mainland China and Taiwan. She also works as a screenplay writer and has collaborated with many prominent Chinese directors such as Ang Lee 李安, Sylvia Chang 張艾嘉, Joan Chen 陳沖Chen Kaige 陳凱歌, Zhang Yimou 張藝謀, and Feng Xiaogang 馮小剛to adapt her writings into films and TV dramas. The 2017 film, Youth 芳華, directed by Feng Xiaogang and based the eponymous novel by Ms. Yan, was one of the highest grossing and most discussed films in China of the year.

Lawrence A. Walker
Lawrence Walker worked as a US diplomat from 1980-1991 and again from 2004-2013, serving in Mexico City, Germany (Bonn and Berlin), Taipei (for Chinese language training), Shenyang, the State Department’s Office of Korean Affairs, on loan to Bank of America in San Francisco, in Nigeria (Abuja), Taipei, Berlin and at the U.S. Africa Command in Stuttgart. Between 1991 to 2004 he worked as managing director of the German-American Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco, and in business development for a dot-com and a venture capital company. In 1999, he translated into English and published a collection of Yan Geling’s works entitled White Snake and Other Stories. More recently, he published a translation of her story ‘The Landlady’女房東 in Granta (https://granta.com/the-landlady/). He currently manages his wife Geling’s business affairs and is translating her novel The Criminal Lu Yanshi 陸犯焉識. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Languages and Linguistics from Georgetown University, an M.B.A. from the University of Illinois and a maîtrise en administration et en gestion from the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, which he attended as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar.