12:15-13:15
Saturday 22/06/2024
Interstellar Ideas
One of the most accomplished international authors writing in English, and all the more remarkable given her origins in China, Xiaolu Guo’s novels, non-fiction, memoirs and films chart a strikingly distinctive journey – from East to West, from one language to another and across artforms, making a map of contemporary creativity that is singular and startlingly relevant to our globalised and migratory times.
Xiaolu will discuss her multi-award-winning work which engages with the writer’s search for roots in her adopted home, alongside a world in turmoil and transition.
Xiaolu Guo is a memoirist, novelist and filmmaker. Her novels include A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, and I Am China. Her memoir Once Upon A Time In The East won the National Book Critics Circle Award 2017and was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. A Lover’s Discourse was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020 and longlisted for the Orwell Prize. Radical was published by Vintage in 2023. Named as a Granta Best of Young British Novelist, she directed a dozen films, including How Is Your Fish Today (Sundance Official Selection 2007) and UFO In Her Eyes. Her feature She, A Chinese received the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno Festival 2009. She had film retrospectives at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, Cinématheque Switzerland, and the Greek Film Archive. She has been a visiting professor at Columbia University and Baruch College in New York, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her 2024 autobiographical reflection My Battle of Hastings completes her ‘transparent self’ trilogy. Her books have been translated into 28 languages.
Xiaolu will be signing her books in the Waterstones Bookshop on the beach after her talk.