Ah Lai 阿来
One of China’s few famous Tibetan writers, Ah Lai started his literary career in the 1980’s as a poet. In the decade that followed he worked as an editor at the literary magazine Grasslands and later as Director of Science Fiction World, which became the largest-circulating science fiction magazine in the world. His first well-received work after switching to fiction was the novel Settling Dust (1998), which narrates the rise and fall of a Tibetan family in times of modernization. It was translated as Red Poppies and made into an award winning film.