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.