Born in Shanghai in 1961, Ying Chen ??) of Lions Bay, B.C. has written fiction and young adult fiction about her Chinese homeland, mainly in French. Having studied French literature at the University of Shanghai, she obtained a degree in French language and literature from Fudan University. She came to Canada in 1989 to further her studies at McGill University, sometimes working as a translator and interpreter. While Chen was living in Quebec, she began writing in French. She later moved to Magog, Quebec. Her novel Ingratitude received the Prix Québec-Paris in 1996 and was shortlisted for the Prix Femina and a Governor General's Award. Published in English in 1998, it's the story of a young woman named Yan-Zi who seeks escape from her suffocating mother by suicide.
Ying Chen moved to Vancouver in 2003. As a child, one of her schoolteachers once told her "the most simple is the most beautiful", and she has retained this idea. Ying Chen's novels include La mémoire de l'eau, Les lettres chinoises, L'ingratitude (which won the Prix Québec-Paris, and was published in the U.S. as "Ingratitude," translated by Carol Volk, and published in China as "????"? self translated), Immobile (which won the Prix Alfred-DesRochers), Le champ dans la mer (published in China as "V???"?self translated), Querelle d'un squelette avec son double (self translated and published on amazon as "Skeleton and its double"), "Le Mangeur", "Un Enfant à ma porte", "Espèces", "la Rive est loin". She wrote two books of essays: "Quatre mille marches" and "La Lenteur des montagnes".
BOOKS:
The Memory of Water
Chinese Letters
Ingratitude (Douglas and McIntyre, 1998)
[BCBW 2004] "Fiction" "Chinese" "French"
Ying Chen moved to Vancouver in 2003. As a child, one of her schoolteachers once told her "the most simple is the most beautiful", and she has retained this idea. Ying Chen's novels include La mémoire de l'eau, Les lettres chinoises, L'ingratitude (which won the Prix Québec-Paris, and was published in the U.S. as "Ingratitude," translated by Carol Volk, and published in China as "????"? self translated), Immobile (which won the Prix Alfred-DesRochers), Le champ dans la mer (published in China as "V???"?self translated), Querelle d'un squelette avec son double (self translated and published on amazon as "Skeleton and its double"), "Le Mangeur", "Un Enfant à ma porte", "Espèces", "la Rive est loin". She wrote two books of essays: "Quatre mille marches" and "La Lenteur des montagnes".
BOOKS:
The Memory of Water
Chinese Letters
Ingratitude (Douglas and McIntyre, 1998)
[BCBW 2004] "Fiction" "Chinese" "French"
Articles: 1 Article for this author
Chen named Shadbolt Fellow
Press Release (2009)
March 19, 2009
By Diane Luckow / SFU Publicity
Novelist Ying Chen is just finishing up a semester as the Shadbolt Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Chen, a graduate in French language and literature from Fudan University in Shanghai, came to Canada 20 years ago to pursue a master's degree in creative writing at McGill University in Montreal.
She has since published seven novels and one collection of essays, all in French. One of them, L'Ingratitude/Ingratitude, which depicts women's condition, won the Prix Quebec-Paris and Elle Quebec magazine's reader's prize (1996) as well as the Prix des Libraires du Quebec (Association of Quebec Booksellers).
A new novel, Un Enfant a ma Porte (A Child at my Door) will be published this spring in Paris. "The book is about a woman who is incapable of handling motherhood and questions the mystification, the unspoken around this subject," says Chen, who has two young children of her own. "All of my works are tragedies. I like tragedy-not in life, but in books."
Chen says her books, though written using simple words and grammar, are not easy to write or read. Her more recent books, for example, have no geographic setting and their characters have no names and are merely represented by letters.
During Chen's time on campus, she has met with students in the French department to discuss the importance of reading and literature. She has also invited guest authors from Quebec, Paris and China to campus to give presentations to students.
The fellowship is funded by the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Endowment in the Humanities.