Writing across Borders — Chinese Female Writers on the Intersection of Language, Cinema, and Theatre

Writing across Borders — Chinese Female Writers on the Intersection of Language, Cinema, and Theatre
“Settling down on a foreign land is like digging one’s own grave. But once it’s done, it’s time for rebirth,” said Zhang Zhen once in an interview. Leaving China decades ago as a poet, Zhang Zhen reinvented herself through film studies, anchoring herself to a wider world and eventually becoming a Professor at the New York University Tisch School. A Senior Programmer at Google, Mu Ming uses science fiction as a way for self-expression, invigorating the genre with Classical Chinese literary tradition. Zhu Yi, who holds an MFA in playwriting from the Columbia University, explores the rather strange life of a wanderer in plays as well as short stories and screenplays.
What do film, theatre, and writing share in common and how do they differ? How does the diasporic experience shape one’s relationship with language and her identity? What does the future look like for film, science fiction, and theatre in the post-pandemic world?
Join Zhang Zhen, Mu Ming, Zhu Yi, and founders of Accent Accent, Zhong Na and Li Jiaoyang, at the roundtable talk, Writing across Borders, on November 19 from 5 - 7:30 pm at the Chinese American Arts Council.

Guest Speaker:

Zhang Zhen, Mu Ming, Zhu Yi, Zhong Na, Li Jiaoyang

Co-host: Accent Accent and Chinese American Arts Council

Zhen Zhang is affiliate associate professor of cinema studies and history at NYU Shanghai. She is also director and founder of the Asian Film and Media Initiative at the Department of Cinema Studies at NYU. She holds a PhD from the University of Chicago and an MA from the University of Iowa.
ZHU Yi is an award-winning playwright, based in NYC, born and raised in Shanghai, China. MFA in Playwriting, Columbia University. She received the First Prize at 2015 World Sinophone Drama Competition, and Shanghai Drama Valley’s 2015 Outstanding Playwright of the Year Award. She is an alumni of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Obie Award-winning playwrights group Youngblood, 2012-2013 Emerging Artist Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop, a member of the Royal Court Theatre’s International Playwrights Programme, Ma-Yi Writers Lab, Clubbed Thumb Theater’s writers group, and Dramatists Guild of America.

Congyun “Mu Ming” Gu is a speculative fiction writer.Mu Ming: Real name Gu Congyun, graduated from the Department of Intelligence Science at Peking University and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Google programmer, presumably the author of the novel. In 2016, he began to write short and novel novels. His works are scattered in publications such as “Flower City”, “World of Science Fiction”, “Selected Chinese Literature” and various online platforms, essays, anthologies and annual selections. Some works have been translated into Italian, English, etc. He has won the Douban Reading Essay Competition Award, Future Science Fiction Master Award, Galaxy Award, Chinese Science Fiction Nebula Award, etc. He has published an Italian collection of short stories “Painting the World”, and a collection of Chinese short stories “Wan Zhuanhuan” will be published soon.
Na Zhong arrived in the U.S. in 2016 in pursuit of her MFA in Creative Writing at The New School. Since then her work has received recognition and support from the Bette Howland Award, the New School Chapbook Contest, the Joan Jakobson Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, the Tin House Workshop, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and most recently, the Center for Fiction in New York City. A cultural podcaster and the Chinese translator of Sally Rooney’s three books, she is completing her first novel. She is a sucker for giant trees.
Jiaoyang Li is a poet and interdisciplinary artist currently based in New York. Her work has been supported by the New York Foundation for the Arts, British Council, New York Live Arts Center, The Immigrants Artist Biennial, Performa Biennial, Milan Contemporary Art Center, The 9th international Poetry Film festival, New York Movie Award and more. Her literary work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Blackbox Manifold, The Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel, 3:AM, Datableedzine, Harana Poetry, Chinese News Magazine, Spittoon Magazine, and elsewhere. She serves as the co-founder of Accent Accent, and the interdisciplinary poetic practice journal 叵CLIP.
Accent Accent, Founded by Na Zhong and Jiaoyang Li to redefine Chinese Literature in the Anglophone literary scene, Accent Society is a platform for Chinese writers and artists around the world, we are dedicated to nurturing and supporting Chinese writers who write across borders(Languages/Countries/Disciplinaries). Our mission is to discover, cultivate, and promote underrepresented voices and daring artistic visions.
Gallery 456 is the visual arts exhibition space of the Chinese American Arts Council. Open to the public during office hours and by appointment, over three decades our non-profit gallery has presented works by more than 250 renowned and emerging artists from around the world, with an emphasis on contemporary artists of Chinese heritage.