Xiaolu Guo (; born 20 November 1973) is a Chinese-born British author, filmmaker and academic. Her writing and films explore migration, alienation, memory, personal journeys, feminism, translation and transnational identities. Guo has directed a dozen films including documentaries and fiction. Her most well-known films include '' She, a Chinese'' and ''We Went to Wonderland''. Her novels have been translated into 28 languages. '' Nine Continents: A Memoir in and out of China'' won the

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Granta ''Granta'' is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centres on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story's supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make ...

'' magazine's Best of Young British Novelists, a list drawn up once a decade. She was an inaugural fellow of the Columbia Institute of Ideas and Imagination in Paris, 2018, and a jury member for the

Man Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, wh ...

2019.

Early life

Xiaolu Guo grew up with her illiterate grandparents in a village of fishermen in Shitang, then with her parents and brother in the city of

Wenling Wenling ( Wenling dialect: Ueng-ling Zy ; ) is a coastal county-level city in the municipal region of Taizhou, in southeastern Zhejiang province, China. It borders Luqiao and Huangyan to the north, Yuhuan to the south, Yueqing to the west, lo ...

, both in the Chinese coastal province of

Zhejiang ) , translit_lang1_type2 = , translit_lang1_info2 = ( Hangzhounese) ( Ningbonese) (Wenzhounese) , image_skyline = 玉甑峰全貌 - panoramio.jpg , image_caption = View of the Yandang Mountains , image_map = Zhejiang i ...

. Her father was a traditional landscape ink painter and her mother was a

Red Guard The Red Guards () were a mass, student-led, paramilitary social movement mobilized by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 until their abolition in 1968, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a ...

during the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...

. She published her first poetry collection in her teens while studying ink painting. In 1993, she left her province to study at the

Beijing Film Academy Beijing Film Academy (BFA; zh, first=s, s=北京电影学院, labels=no) is a municipal public college in Beijing, China. It is affiliated with the City of Beijing and co-funded by the Beijing Municipal People's Government, the National Radio ...

(in the same class as

Jia Zhangke Jia Zhangke ( zh, s=贾樟柯, born 24 May 1970) is a Chinese film and television director, screenwriter, producer, actor and writer. He is the founder of Pingyao International Film Festival, dean of the Shanxi Film Academy of Shanxi Media Co ...

). In 2002 she moved to London to study Documentary Directing at the

National Film and Television School The National Film and Television School (NFTS) is a film, television and games school established in 1971 and based at Beaconsfield Studios in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England. It is featured in the 2024 ranking by ''The Hollywood Repo ...

. She has lived in Paris, Zurich and Berlin.

Career

Xiaolu Guo has served on the judging panel for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and in 2016 she served as a jury for the Financial Times Emerging Voices Awards for Fiction. She has lectured on creative writing and film-making at King's College, London, the University of Westminster, Zurich University, Bern University, Swarthmore College, and Harvard University. She is an honorary professor at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...

and a guest professor at the

University of Bern The University of Bern (, , ) is a public university, public research university in the Switzerland, Swiss capital of Bern. It was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the canton of Bern. It is a comprehensive university offering a br ...

in Switzerland. Guo was a guest of the DAAD Artists in Residence in Berlin in 2012 and a Writer in Residence of the Literaturhaus Zurich and the PWG Foundation in Zurich in 2015. In 2020-2021 she was Writer in Residence of East Asian Department, Columbia University.

Books

Guo's 2005 autobiographical novel, ''Village of Stone'' focuses on two people, Coral and Red, who live together in Beijing, and how Coral's life changes one day when she receives a dried eel in the post, an anonymous gift from someone in her remote home village.

Doris Lessing Doris May Lessing ( Tayler; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British novelist. She was born to British parents in Qajar Iran, Persia, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where ...

spoke highly of the book in 2004: "Reading it rather like finding yourself in a dream." ''

The Times Literary Supplement ''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp. History The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication ...

'' praised the novel: "The language has the pared-down simplicity of a fable; the effect is a bit like that of a

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer. His novels, essays, and short stories have been best-sellers in Japan and internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and having sold millions of copies outside Japan. He has received numerous awards for hi ...

novel." Guo's 2008 novel, '' A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers'', is the first one that she wrote in English after publishing her several Chinese books. It tells the journey of a young Chinese woman in London. She soon renames herself "Z" and her encounters with an unnamed Englishman spur both of them to explore their own sense of identity. The novel is written in the heroine's broken English to begin with, in a dictionary form. With each chapter her English gradually improves, reflecting the improvement of the heroine's own English over the year in which the novel is set. American writer

Ursula Le Guin Ursula Kroeber Le Guin ( ; Kroeber; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author. She is best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the ''Earthsea'' fantas ...

reviewed the book in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'': "We're in the hands of someone who knows how to tell a story ..It succeeds in luring the western reader into an alien way of thinking: a trick only novels can pull off, and indeed one of their finest tricks."Ursula Le Guin
"Review: A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers"
''The Guardian'', 27 January 2007. Her 2009 novel ''UFO in Her Eyes'', set in a semi-real Chinese village, is an experimental meta-fiction in the form of a series of police interviews about an alleged

UFO An unidentified flying object (UFO) is an object or phenomenon seen in the sky but not yet identified or explained. The term was coined when United States Air Force (USAF) investigations into flying saucers found too broad a range of shapes ...

sighting. The novel was adapted into a feature film, produced by Turkish German filmmaker Fatih Akin and directed by Xiaolu Guo herself. It received the Best Script Prize at the Hamburg International Film Festival. Guo's 2010 novel, ''20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth'', is a coming-of-age story about a 21-year-old Chinese woman Fenfang, her life as a film extra in Beijing, to where she has travelled far to seek her fortune, only to encounter a Communist regime that has outworn its welcome, a city in varying degrees of development, and sexism more in keeping with her peasant upbringing than the country's supposedly progressive capital. Guo's 2010 book, ''Lovers in the Age of Indifference'', is a collection of short stories that depicts the lives of people adrift between the West and the East, set in various locations. In 2015, Xiaolu Guo published the novel ''I Am China'', which she describes as "a parallel story about two Chinese lovers in exile – the external and internal exile that I had felt since leaving China". In the book, the London-based literary translator Iona Kirkpatrick discovers a story of romance and revolution as she translates a collection of letters and diaries by a Chinese punk musician named Kublai Jian. Unbeknownst to Iona, Jian has come to Britain seeking political asylum, while another character, Mu, is in Beijing trying to track him down. As the translator tracks the lovers' 20-year relationship, she develops a sense of purpose in deciding to bring Jian and Mu together again before it is too late. It was one of

NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...

's Best Books of 2014. In 2017, she published her

memoir A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based on the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autob ...

'' Once Upon a Time in the East'' (the US edition entitled ''Nine Continents: A Memoir in and out of China'') which received the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. The memoir is a chronicle of her growing up in China in the 1970s and '80s and her journey to the West. In 2020, her novel ''A Lover's Discourse'' was released by Grove Atlantic in the US and Penguin Random House (Chatto) in the UK, and was shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize. In 2021, her nonfiction ''Radical: A Life of My Own'' was released by Grove Atlantic in the US and Penguin Random House (Chatto) in the UK. It was followed by ''My Battle of Hastings'' in August 2024.

Films

Guo's 2004 film is ''The Concrete Revolution'', a film essay about the construction workers in Beijing building stadiums for the

2008 Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and officially branded as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes fr ...

. It received the Grand Prix at the

International Human Rights Film Festival The International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) is one of the most important international events dedicated to cinema and human rights, held annually in Geneva. A ten-days long event is based on the concept ‘A film, A subject, ...

in Paris, 2005 and Special Mention at the Chicago Documentary Film Festival. Guo's 2006 film, '' How Is Your Fish Today?'', inspired by

Alain Robbe-Grillet Alain Robbe-Grillet (; 18 August 1922 – 18 February 2008) was a French writer and filmmaker. He was one of the figures most associated with the ''Nouveau Roman'' () trend of the 1960s, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simo ...

's ''Trans-Europ-Express'' (1966) is a docu-drama set in modern China, focusing on the intertwined stories of two main characters; a frustrated writer (Rao Hui) and the subject of his latest film script, Lin Hao (Zijiang Yang). It was selected for the Official Competition at

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival has acted ...

2007 and

Rotterdam Film Festival International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is an annual film festival held at the end of January in various locations in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, focused on independent and experimental films. The inaugural festival took place in June 1972, ...

, and received the Grand Prix at International Women's Film Festival in France. Guo's 2008 film, ''We Went to Wonderland'' is a black-and-white essay film focusing on two elderly Chinese communists who arrive in the rundown East End of London and comment on the Western world from their astonished Chinese perspective. The film which premiered at the Rotterdam IFFR was immediately picked for the 2008

New Directors/New Films Festival The New Directors/New Films Festival is an annual film festival held in New York City, organized jointly by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Established in 1972, the Festival generally selects films from first-t ...

of the

MoMA The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

/ Lincoln Film Society in New York. Guo's 2009 feature is ''She, a Chinese'', a homage to

Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French and Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as ...

's ''La Chinoise''. This film won the Golden Leopard at the 2009

Locarno International Film Festival The Locarno International Film Festival is a major international film festival, held annually in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narr ...

and the Best Script Award at the

Hamburg Film Festival FILMFEST HAMBURG is an international film festival in Hamburg, the third-largest of its kind in Germany (after Berlin and Munich). It shows national and international feature and documentary films in eleven sections. The range of the program stret ...

2010. It has been distributed in the UK, France, Spain, Germany and Switzerland. Guo's other 2009 film, ''Once Upon a Time Proletarian'', is a sister-film to ''She, a Chinese''. This documentary looks at China in the post-Marxist era and examines different social classes in the society. It premieres at the

Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival (, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival held in Venice, Italy. It is the world's oldest film festival and one of the ...

2009 and has been shown at Rotterdam IFFR and

Sheffield DocFest Sheffield DocFest (formerly styled Sheffield Doc/Fest; abbr.Sheffield International Documentary Festival or SIDF) is an international documentary festival and industry marketplace held annually in Sheffield, England. The festival revolves aro ...

. Guo's 2011 fiction feature, ' is a cinematic adaptation of her novel of the same title. The film stars Chinese actress Shi Ke and German cult figure

Udo Kier Udo Kierspe (born 14 October 1944), known professionally as Udo Kier, is a German actor. Known primarily as a character actor, he has appeared in more than 220 films in both leading and supporting roles throughout Europe and the Americas. He has ...

and is a political metaphor recounted through the transformation that befalls a small Chinese village after an alleged UFO sighting. Inspired by Soviet cinema, Xiaolu Guo dedicated this film to '' Soy Cuba'', a banned 1964 Soviet-Cuban film directed by

Mikhail Kalatozov Mikhail Konstantinovich Kalatozov ( ka, მიხეილ კალატოზიშვილი, ; 28 December 1903 – 26 March 1973), born Mikheil Kalatozishvili, was a Soviet film director of Georgians, Georgian origin who contributed to b ...

. It received the Public Award at the Milan 3-Continental Film Festival 2013. Guo's 2013 film, ''Late at Night, Voices of Ordinary Madness'', focuses on Britain's underclass society, each fighting their ground in their own way. It is the second part of Guo's ''Tomorrow'' trilogy, continued after her documentary ''Once Upon a Time Proletarian''. It premiered at the 57th

BFI London Film Festival The BFI London Film Festival is an annual film festival held in London, England, in collaboration with the British Film Institute. Founded in 1957, the festival runs for two weeks every October. In 2016, the BFI estimated that around 240 fe ...

2013 and Rotterdam Film Festival 2014, and was exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Guo's 2018 documentary feature ''Five Men and a Caravaggio'', is inspired by

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...

's landmark essay ''The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'' (1936). It premiered at the BFI London Film Festival 2018 and the Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival in Greece 2018. In 2020 Guo collaborated with the American Vietnamese filmmaker

Trinh T. Minh-ha Trinh T. Minh-ha (born 1952 in Hanoi; Vietnamese: Trịnh Thị Minh Hà) is a Vietnamese filmmaker, writer, literary theorist, composer, and professor. She has been making films since the 1980s and is best known for her films Reassemblage (film ...

on Trinh's new film 'What About China?'.

Awards and nominations

Guo's third novel, '' A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers'', inspired by

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 25 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popu ...

's work, written originally in broken English, was nominated for the 2007

Orange Prize for Fiction The Women's Prize for Fiction (previously with sponsor names Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 and 2009–2012), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–08) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017) is one of the United Kingdom's ...

and it has been translated into 26 languages. She was also the 2005 Pearl Award (UK) winner for Creative Excellence. Her first novel ''Village of Stone'' was nominated for the

Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in Pennsylvania, United States * Independentes (English: Independents), a Portuguese artist ...

Best Foreign Fiction Prize as well as the

International Dublin Literary Award The International Dublin Literary Award (), established as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, is presented each year for a novel written or translated into English. It promotes excellence in world literature and is solely ...

s. She writes in both English and Chinese, and has served as a jury member for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and International Dublin Literary Award. Her 2014 novel ''I Am China'', set in Europe, China and America, was awarded the Italian Giuseppe Acerbi Prize in the special category for young readers in 2015 and longlisted for the 2015

Women's Prize for Fiction The Women's Prize for Fiction (previously with sponsor names Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 and 2009–2012), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–08) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017) is one of the United Kingdom's ...

. Her 2017 book ''Nine Continents: A Memoir in and out of China'' was the winner in the autobiography section of the

National Books Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Costa Book Award for Biography The Costa Book Award for Biography, formerly part of the Whitbread Book Awards (1971–2006), was an annual literary award for biographies, part of the Costa Book Awards. The award concluded in 2022. Recipients Costa Books of the Year are dist ...

and

Ondaatje Prize The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize is an annual literary award given by the Royal Society of Literature. The £10,000 award is for a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry that evokes the "spirit of a place", and is written by someo ...

2017. Her feature film ''She, a Chinese'' premiered at the 2009

, where it immediately took the highest prize, the Golden Leopard. Her previous feature ''How Is Your Fish Today'' was in Official Selection at the 2007

and received the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007

Créteil International Women's Film Festival The International Women's Film Festival, formerly known as Créteil International Women's Film Festival (in French Festival International de Films de Femmes (FIFF); formerly Festival international de films de femmes de Créteil), also known si ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. Her documentary ''We Went to Wonderland'' (2008) was selected for the

at the

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

in 2008. ''The Concrete Revolution'' premiered at the Margaret Mead Film Festival and International Documentary Film Festival 2005, among others. ''Once Upon a Time Proletarian'' was premiered at

and

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world. Founded in 1976, the festival takes place every year in early September. The organi ...

2009, and received Grand Prix de Geneva at the Documentary Forum Rencontres Media Nord-Sud in Switzerland in 2012. She was awarded the Gilda Film Prize for her film career at the 37th Florence International Cinema and Women Festival in Italy, in 2015. Guo has had film retrospectives at the

Cinéma du Réel Cinéma du réel (Lit. "Cinema of the Real") is an international documentary annual film festival held in Paris, France, since 1978. It is organised by the Bibliothèque publique d'information (BPI), and screenings take place at the Pompidou Cen ...

in the

Pompidou Center The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

in 2010, the

Swiss Film Archive The ''Cinémathèque suisse'' (Swiss Cinematheque), formerly the ''Archives cinématographiques suisses'' (Swiss Film Archive), is a Swiss state-approved non-profit foundation headquartered in Lausanne. It aims to collect, protect, study and pres ...

in 2011, the Greek Film Archive in Athens in 2018 and London's

Whitechapel Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fi ...

in 2019. In 2014, she was included in the BBC's 100 Women. In 2020 she was longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and shortlisted for the

Goldsmiths Prize The Goldsmiths Prize is a British literary award, founded in 2013 by Goldsmiths, University of London, in association with the ''New Statesman.'' It is awarded annually to a British or Irish piece of fiction that "breaks the mould or extends the ...

for ''A Lover's Discourse''. In 2022 Guo was commissioned by the Swiss Television RSI and

Locarno Film Festival The Locarno International Film Festival is a major international film festival, held annually in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narr ...

, directed a short documentary ''Rocks Remember''.

List of awards

* 2008:

shortlist, ''A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers'' * 2013: ''

Granta ''Granta'' is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centres on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story's supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make ...

'' "Best of Young British Novelists" * 2017: National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, ''Nine Continents'' * 2017:

Costa Book Award for Biography The Costa Book Award for Biography, formerly part of the Whitbread Book Awards (1971–2006), was an annual literary award for biographies, part of the Costa Book Awards. The award concluded in 2022. Recipients Costa Books of the Year are dist ...

shortlist, ''Once Upon a Time in the East'' * 2018:

Rathbones Folio Prize The Writers' Prize, previously known as the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Folio Prize and The Literature Prize, is a literary award that was sponsored by the London-based publisher Folio Society, The Folio Society for its first two years, 2014–2 ...

shortlist, ''Once Upon a Time in the East''

Bibliography in Chinese

* ''Poetry Collection (诗集, Shījí)'' (1991). * ''Who Is My Mother's Boyfriend? (我妈妈的男朋友是谁？, Wǒ māmā de nán péngyǒu shì shéi?)'' (screenplay collection, 1998). * ''Flying in My Dreams (梦中或不是梦中的飞行, Mèng zhōng huò bùshì mèng zhōng de fēixíng)'' (essay collection, 1999). * ''Fenfang's 37.2 Degrees (芬芳的37.2度 Fēnfāng de 37.2 dù)'' (2000). Translated as ''20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth'' (2008) * ''Film Notes (电影理论笔记, Diànyǐng lǐlùn bǐjì)'' (film critics, 2001). * ''Movie Map (电影地图, Diànyǐng dìtú)'' (film critics, 2001). * ''Village of Stone (我心中的石头镇, Wǒ xīnzhōng de shítou zhèn)'' (2003).

Bibliography in English

Novels

* * * * * *

Short story collections

Memoirs

* First memoir: ** ** * Second memoir: ** ** * Third memoir: **

Essays

* ''A Soul In Sakhalin'' (2009), First published on ''BBC 3, The Essay'' * ''Further Notes Towards a Metaphysical Cinema Manifesto'' (2010) * ''Notes Towards a Metaphysical Cinema Manifesto'' (2010) * ''Beyond Dissidence'' (2012), First published in ''The Independent'' * ''Coolies'' (2013),

14-18 NOW ''14-18'' (also known as ''Over There, 1914-18'') is a 1963 French documentary film about World War I, directed by Jean Aurel. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Best Documentary Feature. Refer ...

* ''Memories of An Island'' (2014) Dark Mountain, Issue 7 * ''The Vital Ingredient'' (2014), First published in ''The Economist'' * ''Reading Howl in China'' (2014), First published in ''Aeon Magazine'' * ''Waiting for the Second Renaissance'' (2014) * ''The Ying and Yang of Heidi'' (2016), ''Viceversa Literatur'' * ''My Writing Day'' (2016), ''

'' * ''Fishermen Always Eat Fish Eyes First'' (2017), Freeman's #3: Home * ''On Self-Translation'' (2023)
Lit Hub

Filmography

As director, producer and screenwriter

* ''Far and Near'' (Documentary Essay, 2003) * ''The Concrete Revolution'' (Documentary, 2004) * '' How Is Your Fish Today?'' (Fiction Feature, 2006) * ''Address Unknown'' (Fiction short, Visual Essay 2007) * ''We Went to Wonderland'' (Documentary, 2008) * ''An Archeologist's Sunday'' (Fiction Short, 2008) * ''Once Upon a Time Proletarian'' (Documentary, 2009) * ''She, a Chinese'' (Fiction Feature, 2009) * ' (Fiction Feature, 2011) * ''Late at Night - Voices of Ordinary Madness'' (Documentary, 2013) * ''Five Men And A Caravaggio'' (Documentary reconstruction, 2018) * ''Rocks Remember'' (Documentary, 2022)

As screenwriter

* ''Love in the Internet Age (Wangluo shidai de aiqing)'' (1998) * '' The House (Menghuan tianyuan)'' (1999)

As playwright

* ''Beijing's Slowest Elevator'' (2009), BBC Radio 3 * ''Dostoevsky and the Chickens'' (2014), BBC Radio 3, the WireDostoevsky and the Chickens
/ref>

Awards

* ''UFO in Her Eyes'' Public Award, Milan 3 Continents International Film Festival, 2010 City of Venice Award (2nd Prize), Premio Città di Venezia, 70a Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica 2013 * ''She, A Chinese'' Golden Leopard Award (Grand Prix) in the International Competition,

2009. Mount Blanc Prize for the Best Script,

2009. * ''Once Upon a Time Proletarian'' Grand Prix de Geneva, Forum 2011. Nomination, Horizon Award,

2009 * ''How Is Your Fish Today?'' Grand Prix,

2007, France; Nominated, Best Drama at

2007; Special Mention at the

's Tiger Award 2007, Special Mention at the Pesaro Film Festival 2007 and the Fribourg Film Festival 2007. * ''The Concrete Revolution'' Grand Prix,

, Paris 2005; Nomination Best Documentary at Chicago Documentary Film Festival 2005; Special Jury Prize at

EBS International Documentary Festival EBS International Documentary Festival also known as EIDF, is an annual film festival hosted by the Educational Broadcasting System of South Korea since 2004. It is "Asia’s prestigious documentary festival", with focus on highlighting documenta ...

, Seoul 2005 * ''Far and Near'' ICA Beck's Future Student Prize 2003,

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an modernism, artistic and cultural centre on The Mall (London), The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps a ...

, London

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Guo, Xiaolu 1973 births Living people 20th-century Chinese novelists 20th-century Chinese women writers 21st-century Chinese women writers Beijing Film Academy alumni British people of Chinese descent Chinese film directors Chinese women novelists Exophonic writers Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Film directors from Zhejiang Post 70s Generation Writers from Taizhou, Zhejiang