Writing, Translation, and the Changing World: Yang Hao in Conversation

Chinese novelist Yang Hao, whose Diablo’s Boys was recently published in English, will be in conversation with her translators Nicky Harman and Michael Day, Irish writer Mark O’Connell, and Professor Peter Arnds. Hao will also discuss her new short story collection The Long Slumber (《大眠》), much of it written in Dublin, with two stories already available in English translation. 

Yang Hao grew up in Beijing. She has published two novels in Chinese, Novel Noir and Diablo’s Boys, and a short story collection, The Long Slumber. Stories from this collection have appeared in English translation in Two Lines Magazine and Copper Nickel. Her debut novel Novel Noir was shortlisted for the Blancpain–Imaginist Literary Award in 2019, and Diablo’s Boys (translated by Nicky Harman and Michael Day) is her first novel to be translated into English. Recognized as one of the most intriguing literary voices from China, she writes with a background in literature, film, and art history, and many years of living in the UK. She is currently a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Trinity College Dublin.

Mark O'Connell is the author of A Thread of Violence, Notes from an Apocalypse, and To Be a Machine. To Be a Machine was awarded the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize, the 2019 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. A Thread of Violence was named Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2023 Irish Book Awards, and was shortlisted for the Writer's Prize. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The Guardian. He writes a weekly column for The Irish Times.

Nicky Harman is based in the UK. She translates from Chinese, focusing on contemporary fiction for adults and children, literary non-fiction, and occasionally poetry, by a wide variety of authors. These include Yang Hao, Jia Pingwa, Han Dong, Xu Xiaobin, Huang Beijia, and many more. She volunteers for Paper-Republic.org, a registered UK charity promoting Chinese literature in translation, where she is also a trustee. She writes blogs (for instance on Asian Books Blog) on translation, gives talks and lectures, mentors new translators, teaches summer schools, and judges translation competitions.

Michael Day is a traveler, translator, and writer who splits his time between Los Angeles and Latin America. He has translated authors such as Yang Hao, Chen Cun, Chi Zijian, Dai Lai, Shuang Xuetao, Lu Min, Dorothy Tse, and Zhu Hui for outlets including Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel, Words Without Borders, Massachusetts Review, and Copper Nickel. His full-length translations include Justice with a Smile by Osamu Dazai, Scorpions by Yumiko Kurahashi and Diablo's Boys by Yang Hao (co-translation with Nicky Harman). He is the recipient of the Jules Chametzky and Bai Meigui translation prizes.

Professor Peter Arnds directs the Comparative Literature program and teaches German and Italian literature at Trinity College Dublin, where he is also a Fellow. He has held visiting positions in Kabul, Delhi, Adelaide and Salamanca, and is a member of the PEN Centre for German-Speaking Writers Abroad and of Academia Europaea. His publications include books on Wilhelm Raabe, Charles Dickens, Günter Grass, and most recently Wolves at the Door: Migration, Dehumanization, Rewilding the World (Bloomsbury, 2021). His novel Searching for Alice was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2019. His book Like Sheep to the Slaughter: An Eco-Literary Approach to Human and Animal Genocide is forthcoming with New York University Press.