1.12.21
Our December Member Spotlight features Ouyang Yu, who was recently shortlisted for the 2021 Melbourne Prize for Literature's Writer's Prize, and announced as the winner of the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Collection at the 2021 Queensland Literary Awards for his collection, Terminally Poetic!
Ouyang Yu has published 137 books in both English and Chinese in the field of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, literary translation and criticism. His second book of English poetry, Songs of the Last Chinese Poet, was shortlisted for the 1999 NSW Premier’s Literary Award. His third novel, The English Class, won the 2011 NSW Premier’s Award, and his translation in Chinese of The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes won the Translation Award from the Australia-China Council in 2014. He has also been the recipient of a number of major Australia Council grants.
What inspired you to begin writing?
One doesn’t rely on inspiration alone to write. Life itself is the source of my writing. I’ve got something to say and I’ve got no one to tell it to, so I write, and I wrote, and I began writing.
What did it mean to you to win the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Collection, as well as to be shortlisted for the Melbourne Prize for Literature's Writer's Prize this year?
It means pure delight, to win and to be shortlisted.
What do you know now that you wish you'd known at the beginning of your writing journey?
I wish someone had advised me against it and I wonder why no one had told me about the difficulties of writing and its accompanying impossibilities.
Which Australian authors or illustrators have been influential for your writing practice and career?
Writers like Alex Miller, Nicholas Jose and Rodney Hall are all good influences to me. And there are other influences that I have translated and published in Chinese, such as Christina Stead, Jessica Anderson, Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes, Xavier Herbert, just to name a few.
Find out more about Ouyang at his bilingual blog here: youyang2.blogspot.com
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