Adam Williams

Adam Williams is a businessman and novelist based in Beijing. His historical fiction trilogy, comprising The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure, The Emperor’s Bones and The Dragon’s Tail follows the fortunes of three generations of an English family, spanning China’s tumultuous last century from the Boxer rebellion until the summer of 1989.

Having completed his China trilogy, and by way of contrast, Adam is currently working on a novel set in 12th Century Andaluz.

Anna Funder

Catherine Sampson

Catherine Sampson is a crime writer originally from England and now based in Beijing. Previously a journalist, Catherine reported for the BBC and London’s The Times before turning to fiction full time. The third of her novels featuring single mother and investigative journalist Robin Ballantyne, Pool of Unease, after Falling Off Air and Out of Mind, was published in 2007 and is set largely in Beijing. She lives in the city with her husband, Economist correspondent James Miles, and her three children.

Chris Koch

Christopher Koch was born and educated in Tasmania. For a good deal of his life he was a broadcasting producer, working for the ABC in Sydney. He has been a fulltime writer since 1972, winning international praise and a number of awards for his novels, many of which have been translated in a number of European countries. His novel, The Year of Living Dangerously, was made into a film by Peter Weir and nominated for an Academy Award. In 1995 Koch was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his contribution to Australian literature.

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Chris Kremmer

Christopher Kremmer is one of Australia's most respected and popular writers of narrative non-fiction, whose work has been compared favourably with that of VS Naipaul and William Dalrymple. Educated at the University of Canberra, he spent a decade in Asia working as a foreign correspondent, producing a series of award-winning bestsellers, including The Carpet Wars, Bamboo Palace and his latest book, Inhaling the Mahatma, a personal history of India. Born in Sydney he divides his time between homes in India and Australia's Southern Highlands.

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Edward Ragg

English poet and academic Edward Ragg is a scholar of Keble College, Oxford and Selwyn College, Cambridge. He holds degrees in English, Publishing and American Literature. In 2005 he completed a Ph.D. at Cambridge on the work of 20th Century American poet Wallace Stevens.

As a poet, Ragg has published in various international magazines including PN Review, Critical Quarterly, and Agenda. His work was recently included in Carcanet Press’s New Poetries IV anthology and is currently being translated into Chinese by Beijing-poet Wang Ao.

Eric Abrahamsen

Eric Abrahamsen came to China in 2001 as part of his undergraduate studies at the University of Washington. He's been here ever since, working as a magazine editor, guidebook writer, freelance journalist and translator. He developed an interest in Chinese literature almost before he could read it, and now in addition to translation also works in various ways to promote Chinese literature abroad.

Gail Jones

Gail Jones writes powerful stories with settings and themes as diverse as photography and illumination in the nineteenth century, studies of technology in contemporary Japan and Aboriginal reconciliation in present day Australia. Her writing has been richly awarded, including the Nita B Kibble Award, the Western Australian Premier's Fiction and Premier’s prizes, the Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction, the South Australian Festival Award for Literature, as well as a longlisting for the MAN Booker Prize and twice shortlisted for the Miles Franklin.

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Geoff Raby – Australian Ambassador to the PRC

Dr Geoff Raby was born in Melbourne, Australia. Before joining the Commonwealth Public Service, he was senior tutor in economics at La Trobe University. He has BEc (Hons), MEc and PhD degrees from La Trobe. He spent time in Beijing between 1986 and 1991, heading the Embassy's Economic Section. Dr Raby was Deputy Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) from November 2002 to November 2006. He has been Australian Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China since May 2007, when he presented his Credentials to the President of the People’s Republic of China, HE Mr Hu Jintao, on 11 May.

George Dunford

George Dunford has worked on travel guidebooks for Lonely Planet (including Australia and New Zealand on a Shoestring, Southeast Asia on Shoestring, The Travel Book and Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Self-proclaimed Nations) and Rough Guides. He's also penned reviews for The Age’s Cheap Eats guide and has contributed to Wanderlust, The Age, The Big Issue, Australian Traveller Magazine and others. He wrote the first blog for Lonely Planet’s website, produced podcasts and acted as a commissioning editor for Northeast Asia. He’s currently working on The Big Trip, a guide for first-time travellers.

Geremie Barmé

Geremie R. Barmé grew up in Sydney and spent the dying years of the Cultural Revolution in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenyang, following which he worked as an editor and translator in Hong Kong, during which time he also wrote columns for the Chinese press. He has written a number of books on Chinese culture and history, including the award-winning biography (An Artistic Exile, 2002), and has made a number of films with the Long Bow Group in Boston (The Gate of Heavenly Peace, 1995, and Morning Sun, 2003). He is now Professor of Chinese History at The Australian National University, Canberra, where among other things he edits the periodical China Heritage Quarterly.

Hari Kunzru

Hari Kunzru received one of the highest advances in publishing history for his first novel, ‘The Impressionist’, which won the Betty Trask Award in 2002, and was shortlisted simultaneously for the Guardian and Whitbread First Book Awards. He was selected as one of the Best Young British Writers of 2003. Hari is also the author of the short story collection ‘Noise´ and the novel, ‘Transmission’. His third novel, My Revolutions was published in 2007.  He now sits on the Executive Council of the UK chapter of writers’ organization PEN and lives in London.

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Howard Goldblatt

Howard Goldblatt has taught modern Chinese literature and culture for more than a quarter of a century. The foremost translator of modern and contemporary Chinese literature in the West, he has published English translations of more than thirty novels and story collections by writers from China, Taiwan, and HK. The founding editor of the scholarly journal Modern Chinese Literature, he has contributed essays and articles to The Washington Post, The Times of London, TIME Magazine, World Literature Today, and The Los Angeles Times, as well as scholarly books and journals.

Brought to you by Penguin

James Kynge

James Kynge was formerly the China correspondent for the Financial Times and is now head of the Pearson Group, Beijing. His commentary, China Shakes The World won the FT Goldman Sachs Book of the Year 2006.

James McGregor

James McGregor, author of bestseller One Billion Customers: Lessons From the Front Lines of Doing Business in China, is a journalist-turned-businessman who has lived in China for nearly two decades. He is currently a China business investor, advisor and entrepreneur. James is a frequent public speaker and television commentator on China, having appeared on CNBC, CNN, PBS, NPR, BBC and a range of other television stations known by their acronyms. 

Jo Lusby

Jo Lusby is General Manager of Penguin China, an impassioned reader and a long term friend of The Bookworm, having helped physically to stock its shelves during the project’s early incarnations. Now stocking our shelves in terms of the numerous writers she has helped to publish and promote, we’re delighted to have Jo participate in The Bookworm Literary Festival 2008.

Image copyright Lucy Cavender 

John Man

John Man is a British historian and writer, educated at Oxford University, and at SOAS in London. After training in journalism with Reuters, he became European Editor of Time-Life Books. In the mid-1970s, he turned to writing full-time, with occasional forays into film, TV and radio.

Amongst other titles, John is the author of three biographies on Asian leaders - Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Resurrection, Attila the Hun, and Kublai Khan. His new book, The Terracotta Army has just been published to coincide with the current British Museum exhibition and is soon to be followed by The Great Wall of China.

Jonathon Watts

Jonathan Watts is the East Asia correspondent for The Guardian and The Observer. A 40-year-old London-born graduate of Manchester University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, he reported on Japan for seven years before taking up his post in Beijing in August 2003. He was formerly vice president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan and is now serving on the professional committee of the Foreign Correspondents Club of China. He is currently struggling with a book on China's environment.

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Justin Hill

Justin Hill is a novelist and poet originally from the UK and now resident in Hong Kong. His first novel, The Drink and Dream Teahouse, won the 2003 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and a Betty Trask Award. His subsequent novel, Passing Under Heaven, gained him the 2005 Somerset Maugham Award, with his third book, a factual account of his time in Eritrea short listed for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.

Justin’s writing reflects his long term interests in travel and more specifically in China, having spent many years in rural China and Africa as a volunteer with the VSO.

Brought to you by Harrow International School Beijing  

Lijia Zhang

Originally from Nanjing, Lijia was plucked out of school and placed in a rocket factory for ten years at the tender age of 17, where she taught herself English. In 1990, Lijia went to England where she pursued her childhood dream of studying journalism.  Her features have appeared in many international publications, and she is a regular contributor to the BBC, Channel 4 and NPR.  She is the co-author of China Remembers.  Her memoir Socialism is Great! has just been published by Atlas Books in New York.

Lily Brett

Lily Brett was born in Germany and grew up in Melbourne. She is the author of five novels, three collections of essays and seven collections of poetry. Her first book, The Auschwitz Poems won the 1987 Victorian Premier's Award for poetry and both her fiction and poetry have won other major prizes, including the 1995 NSW Premier's Award for Fiction for Just Like That. Her novel, Too Many Men, which won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize in 2000 was a bestseller both in Australia and in Germany. Its sequel, 'You Gotta Have Balls', was published in 2006. Lily Brett lives in New York with her husband, the artist, David Rankin.

Brought to you by Australian Writers Week

Photo credit: Bettina Strauss

Liz Niven

Liz Niven is a Scottish poet and writer who was born in Glasgow. She has published several poetry collections, including Stravaigan and Burning Whins, and written and edited texts to support Scots and English language work in Education.
She teaches creative writing and has held writing fellowships throughout Scotland. Her collaborative work includes various projects with artists, photographers and sculptors.
She has been awarded two Scottish Arts Council Writers’ Bursaries and a Year of the Artist Award.  

Melinda Liu

Melinda Liu is one of Newsweek's most experienced foreign correspondents. She is currently Newsweek Beijing Bureau chief, having returned to China in late 1998 to head the bureau she herself opened in 1980. Winner of the 2006 Harvard/Standford Shorenstein Journalism Award for coverage of Asia, Liu has reported on Asian topics for nearly three decades. She has also spent many months at a time covering conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti and other hotspots.   Liu is president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China. 

Miles Merrill

Born in Chicago, Miles Merrill is the son of a Black Panther father and a mother whose family tree dates back to British-American Colonialism. Now resident in Australia, Miles’ performances are a spoken word tour de force. Combining elements of theatre, hip-hop, slam poetry and music, he ‘flings words in a rapid fire onslaught of versified emotion’, and is certainly not to be missed.

Nicholas Bonner

Nicholas Bonner moved to Beijing in 1993 and set up his company Koryo Tours which specialises in travel and cultural exchanges with North Korea. In 1998 he teamed up with Daniel Gordon to produce three award winning documentaries: The Game of Their Lives tracked down the North Korean football team responsible for the greatest shock in World Cup History, A State of Mind followed two gymnasts in the lead up to the incredible spectacle which is the 100,000- strong Mass Games synchronised dance performance, and Crossing the Line (premiered at the Sundance Film Festival) - a fascinating account of the last of the US soldiers who defected to North Korea in the 1960’s.

In contrast to documentary film making he is currently working on the script for a North Korean romantic comedy, featuring a North Korean cast and crew…

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Nicholas Jose

Nicholas Jose grew up in Australia and studied at at the Australian National University, Canberra, and Magdalen College, Oxford. He has travelled extensively in Europe and Asia and from 1986 to 1990 worked in Shanghai and Beijing, including as Cultural Counsellor at the Australian Embassy. He has held the Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide since 2005. Nicholas is the author of seven novels, including ‘Original Face’, and ‘Avenue of Eternal Peace’, two collections of short stories, a memoir, and ‘Chinese Whispers, Cultural Essays’.  

Brought to you by Australian Writers Week

Nikki Anderson

Nikki Anderson has worked in the literary arena for over a decade: as a literary agent in Spain and Australia; manager of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival Schools' Program; coordinating Asialink’s writers-in-residence residency program; and planning and executing tours of high-profile authors throughout Asia. She currently works as a literary consultant, editor and writer based in Melbourne, Australia. Nikki is co-ordinator of the Australian Writers Week 2008.

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Nury Vittachi

It’s fair to say no line up for a literary festival in Asia these days is complete without the inclusion of maverick writer Nury Vittachi. Author, tireless moderator, host of cabaret, literary quizzes, open mics and whatever else a festival chooses to throw at him, The Bookworm are delighted to invite Nury, Hong Kong’s best selling writer in English, back a second time for our 2008 festival. Nury’s most recent title, The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics was published in 2007 and features, amongst other things, an elephant mired and immobile in Shanghai traffic.

Ouyang Yu

Ouyang Yu moved to Australia in early 1991 and has since published 42 books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, literary translation and criticism in English and Chinese languages. He also edits Australia’s only Chinese literary journal, Otherland (since 1995). His noted books include his award-winning novel, The Eastern Slope Chronicle (2002), his collection of poetry, Songs of the Last Chinese Poet (1997), his translations in Chinese, The Female Eunuch (1991) and The Man Who Loved Children (1998), and his book of criticism, Chinese in Australian Fiction: 1888-1988 (forthcoming in the USA, 2008). He now writes and teaches part-time in China and Australia. 

His latest publication is a book of creative non-fiction, On the Smell of An Oily Rag: speaking English, thinking Chinese and living Australian (Feb. 08).

Patrick Gale

Patrick Gale was born on the Isle of Wight. A talented musician, he was working as a singing waiter when he wrote his first novel, The Aerodynamics of Pork, on the back of his order pad. The author of fourteen books, Patrick’s latest novel, Notes from an Exhibition, tells the story of artist Rachel Kelly, whose life has been a sacrifice to both her art and her debilitating manic depression. Patrick Gale is also a biographer, a writer for television, and a contributor to numerous anthologies. He lives with his partner, a farmer, in Cornwall, England.

Image copyright John Foley

Paul French

Paul French is a writer, and the co-founder and director of market research firm Access Asia. An eclectic researcher – to say the least – his various titles include ‘One Billion Shoppers’,  ‘North Korea: the Paranoid Peninsula’, and ‘Carl Crow – a Tough Old China Hand’  as well as three new titles forthcoming in 2008 including ‘A Peking Murder’. Paul has appeared at The Bookworm on numerous previously memorable occasions, most notably perhaps when he outlined to adolescents the benefits of opium smoking in 18th century London.

Rob Gifford

Rob Gifford has an undergraduate in Chinese Studies from Durham University, an MA in East Asian Studies from Harvard, and has been traveling back and forth between China, the US and the UK for the last twenty years. From 1999 to 2005, he was based in Beijing as China correspondent for America’s National Public Radio network. He has traveled widely throughout China and across Asia, reporting for the BBC, and for NPR.

Rob’s fascinating account of his journey across China, from Shanghai to the Khazak border, China Road, was published in 2007.

Roy Kesey

Roy Kesey’s fiction and dispatches have been published in some of the world’s most respected literary journals including McSweeney’s, The Iowa Review and New Sudden Fiction . His novella, Nothing in the World won the Bullfight Short Fiction Prize in 2006, and his short story ‘Wait’ was recently selected to appear in the Best American Short Stories 2007 collection. Based in Beijing, Roy will perhaps be better known in the city for his monthly column, ‘Little Known Corners’ for That’s Beijing magazine. Roy’s most recent collection of short stories, All Over was published to critical acclaim in 2007.

Image copyright Lucy Cavender

Sheila Melvin

Sheila Melvin writes and consults about business and culture in China. She is the author of The Little Red Book of China Business (2007) and the co-author, with her husband Jindong Cai, of Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese (2004). Ms Melvin spent seven years working at the US-China Business Council.  She has written dozens of articles on the contemporary culture scene in China and her work has been carried in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, The Asian Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and many other publications.

Su Xiaowei

Su Xiaowei divides her time working for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), UN Volunteers, and China Radio International where she hosts a weekly interview program 'Voices from Other Lands.' She is a Tianjin native and received her BA in Political Science from UC San Diego. Xiaowei has been living in Beijing since 2004.

Tim Clissold

Tim Clissold is a writer and businessman who divides his time between China and the UK. His first book, Mr China, an arrestingly honest account of his first forages into the labyrinthine world of doing business in the middle kingdom, was published in 2004. It immediately appeared on bestseller lists worldwide, opening the floodgates for a deluge of titles on how to – and how not to – manage commerce and relationships between China and the West.

Qiu Xiaolong

Qiu Xiaolong is the author of the award-winning Inspector Chen series of mystery novels, featuring Death of a Red Heroine , A Loyal Character Dancer (2002), When Red Is Black (2004), A Case of Two Cities (2006), and his latest installment, set in Beijing,  Red Mandarin Dress. He is also the author of two books of poetry translations, Treasury of Chinese Love Poems (2003) and Evoking T'ang (2007), and a poetry collection, Lines Around China (2003). Death of a Red Heroine was voted among the top five political novels of all time in the Wall Street Journal.

Yiyun Li

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and moved to the United States in 1996. Her stories and essays have been published in magazines in both the US and Britain, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Prospect.

Her debut short story collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won international accolades including the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award for first fiction. Yiyun was recently selected by Granta magazine as a Best Young American Novelist. She lives in California.

Zhao Hui Xu

Zhao Hui Xu was born in Hubei in 1971. Her childhood was spent exploring mountains and woods with her siblings and other local children. She often arrived home late and made up stories about adventures undertaken while saving others, in order to avoid being scolded by her parents. Zhao Hui took up a teaching job at the Western Academy of Beijing in 1998. Working with children has ignited her childhood passion for reading and creating fantasy stories. She was able to rediscover her childhood joy of story telling when she traveled about on various forms of transport with her then 3-year-old son, who asked numerous questions about the vehicles and requested stories about all of them. These stories became the foundation of her first picture book, 'Bus Adventures' published in July 2007. Zhao Hui also wrote a series of stories called Long Tong Town.

Zhu Wen

Zhu Wen is a writer and filmmaker originally from Fujian Province. Best known in English for his collection of novellas and short stories, I Love Dollars, Zhu Wen’s work has recently been re-printed by both Penguin and Columbia University Press. Fast paced, edgy and darkly funny, Zhu Wen’s writing is a refreshingly critical take on Chinese contemporary society. Equally successful as a film maker, his first film, Seafood won the prestigious Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2001, with South of the Clouds taking the NETPAC prize in Berlin in 2004. He now lives in Beijing.

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