Yan Geling

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Yan Geling (严歌苓)

Yan Geling (Chinese: 严歌苓) is a famous contemporary author and playwright, capable of writing in both Chinese and English. Many of her novels, including "A Woman's Epic", "Thirteen Flowers of Nanjing" and "The Ninth Widow", have been adapted into films and TV series.

The film "The Flowers of War", based on Yan's novel "The Thirteen Flowers of Nanjing", was recently announced as China's official submission in the category of Best Foreign-Language Film for next year's Oscars. It is rumored that Yan is one of the front-runners to win this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. However, the rumor was denied by both Yan and the Swedish Nobel Academy.

Born 1958 in Shanghai, Yan is the daughter of writer Yan Dunxun, better known by his penname Xiao Ma. At the age of 12, she performed as a dancer in the People's Liberation Army (PLA), where she also studied writing. At 20, she worked as a correspondent covering the Sino-Vietnamese War and was shocked by the cruelty she witnessed. In 1978, she published her maiden fairy poem "A conversation between a protractor and a poker". Two years later, her screenplay "Heart String" was filmed by Shang Film Studio. Between 1981 and 1986, she published a number of award-winning novels, including, "Scallion", "Green Blood" and "The Whisper of a Woman Soldier".

In 1988, she went to the United States at the invitation of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and entered Colombia College Chicago to study for a master's degree in fiction writing. Her first English-language novel "The banquet Bug", which has a five-star rating on Amazon.com and was selected as a "Book before bedtime" by the BBC, also won the Gold Award from the Chinese American Librarians Association. . Most of Yan's novels focus on the lives of poorer people and those living on the fringes of Chinese society. Yan is now a member of the Hollywood Writer's Guild of America and the Writer's Association of China.