Ying Chen

Ying Chen (; born February 20, 1961) is a Chinese Canadian author. She writes primarily in French and has translated a few of her own works into Chinese and English. Her 1995 book ''L'ingratitude'' received a Prix Québec-Paris.

Biography

Chen was born in 1961 in Shanghai to an engineer father. She grew up during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, finishing secondary school just two years after entrance exams were reinstated in 1977. She initially wanted to study Chinese literature, but decided to read Modern Languages instead, where she was admitted due in part to her superior marks in Russian. From there, she chose to pursue French over the other two options, English or Japanese. She obtained a degree in French language and literature from Fudan University in 1983 and spent six years working as a translator in Mandarin, Italian, English, and French at the Institute of Astronautical Research in Shanghai.

In 1989, Chen left China and moved to Montréal to earn a Master's degree in creative writing at McGill University. Not long after she left China, students were massacred in Tiananmen Square, which made her anxious and homesick. She later compared her migration to Canada to "a form of suicide". She completed her degree in 1991, fulfilling her thesis requirements in two parts: a critical study of '' Les Dieux ont soif'', and an original work, ''Fleurs de lotus'', which became the beginning of her first novel, ''La Mémoire de l'eau'', which she published the following year. Chen and her family lived in Magog, Quebec in the late 1990s and early 2000s before relocating to Vancouver in 2003 to be closer to her husband's job. In 2009, she was a Shadbolt Fellow at Simon Fraser University, which has since named two scholarships in her honor.

Ying Chen's novels include ''La mémoire de l'eau'' (1992), ''Les lettres chinoises'' (1993; second edition in 1998), and ''L'ingratitude'' (1995). ''L'ingratitude'' won the Prix Québec-Paris in 1995 and was translated into English by Carol Volk through Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1998. Chen also translated it into Chinese and it was released under the name ' in 2002. It has since been translated into Italian, English, Spanish, and Serbian. Her next book, ''Immobile'' (1998), won the Prix Alfred-DesRochers.

She self-translated ''Le champ dans la mer'' (2002) into Chinese as ' (2016) and ''Querelle d'un squelette avec son double'' (2003) into English as ''Skeleton and its double'' (2016). Other books include ''Le Mangeur'' (2006), ''Un enfant à ma porte'' (2008), ''Espèces'' (2010), and ''La Rive est loin'' (2012). She also has two books of essays, ''Quatre mille marches: un rêve chinois'' (2004) and ''La lenteur des montagnes'' (2014), and has published poetry in French and Mandarin. In 2001, she served as a judge on the panel for the 2001 Governor General's Award for French-language fiction.

Personal life

Chen and her husband have two sons, Yuan (born 1996) and Lee (born 1998). When she became a Canadian national, she "yielded to North American practice, putting family name last." This, in effect, turned her birth name into a ''nom de plume''.

Selected works

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Awards

Chen has twice been nominated for the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction: once for ''L'ingratitude'' in 1995 and again for ''Immobile'' in 1998. ''L'ingratitude'' was also nominated for a Prix Femina (1995).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chen, Ying
1961 births
Living people
21st-century Canadian novelists
Chinese emigrants to Canada
Canadian writers of Asian descent
Canadian women novelists
Naturalized citizens of Canada
Short story writers from Shanghai
Fudan University alumni
21st-century Canadian women writers
Canadian novelists in French
Chinese women novelists
Chinese novelists
Canadian women short story writers
Chinese women short story writers
Chinese short story writers
French-language writers from China
Chevaliers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres