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Qiu Miaojin (1969–1995) – one of Taiwan’s most innovative literary modernists, and the country’s most renowned lesbian writer – was born in Chuanghua County in western Taiwan. She graduated with a degree in psychology from National Taiwan University and pursued graduate studies in clinical psychology at the University of Paris VIII. Her first published story, “Prisoner,” received the Central Daily News Short Story Prize, and her novella Lonely Crowds won the United Literature Association Award. While in Paris, she directed a thirty-minute film called Ghost Carnival, and not long after this, at the age of twenty-six, she committed suicide. The posthumous publications of her novels Last Words from Montmartre and Notes of a Crocodile made her into one of the most revered countercultural icons in Chinese letters. After her death in 1995, she was given the China Times Honorary Prize for Literature. In 2007, a two-volume edition of her Diaries was published. In 2017, she became the subject of a feature-length documentary by Evans Chan titled Death in Montmartre. Qiu’s films can be found in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

See part of a Chinese-language documentary on Qiu, directed by Evans Chan, on Youtube here.

Listen to an interview with translator Ari Larissa Heinrich here.

Watch a reading by translator Bonnie Huie here.