Hong Ying was born in Chingqing in 1962 and started writing in the early 1980s. She has produced both fiction and poetry. In 1991 she settled in England but returned to China in about 2004. Her novels Summer of Betrayal, her autiobiography Daughter of the River (饥饿的女儿), as well as K: The Art of Love (K), Peacock Cries(孔雀的叫喊) and Concubine of Shanghai (上海王)have all been translated into English, the last three by Marion Boyars Publishers, UK.