The International Booker Prize for Taiwan: A Behind-the-scenes Story

Congratulations to Yang Shuang-zi and Lin King on winning the 2026 International Booker Prize for Taiwan Travelogue !Yang Shuang-zi and Lin King’s collaboration has an interesting behind-the-scenes story. They have both been widely recognized for their talent and hard work.

However, years ago, they did not know each other at all, so how did they come to know each other and begin collaborating? Who introduced them? What platform or occasion allowed them to showcase the results of their partnership? I feel that it is my duty to introduce the many unsung heroes behind their success. Their contributions deserve recognition, so I have decided to tell their story.

On July 28, 2021, during the COVID pandemic, the following webpage was published: [https://aaww.org/seasons-of-bloom-flower-time/]. It features a bilingual Chinese-English excerpt from Seasons of Bloom, the first novel published by Yang Shuang-zi, with Lin King as the English translator. (Yang had published other books under a different pen name.) The translated excerpt is also the first published outcome of their collaboration.

The bilingual webpage belonged to the following special feature:“Transpacific Literary Project: Queer Time: A Special Notebook of Taiwanese Tongzhi Literature.”The guest editors of the special issue are the Taiwanese American writer Ariel Chu (Instagram: spindly.waif), who is much younger than I am, and myself. The editors’ introduction can be found here: [https://aaww.org/queer-time-a-special-notebook-of-taiwanese-tongzhi-literature ] Ariel invited Lin King to translate Yang Shuang-zi’s fiction, while it was I who chose Yang Shuang-zi and the excerpt from Seasons of Bloom. The illustrations on the webpage were all created by the Asian American artist Kira Wei-Hsin Jacobson.

The organization that hosted the online feature “Queer Time: A Special Notebook of Taiwanese Tongzhi Literature” was the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW; Instagram: aaww_nyc), a nonprofit organization based in New York City. All participants in the project—authors, translators, illustrators, and both editors—received compensation from the AAWW. The project was not funded by any agency in Taiwan.

Without these contributors working behind-the-scenes, Yang Shuang-zi and Lin King’s bilingual literary work would never have been published online; indeed, the two of them might never have even met. I am also sharing this story to thank all these people and organizations.

Before the COVID pandemic, Ariel had just completed an MFA in creative writing in the United States and received a prestigious scholarship that allowed her to become a visiting scholar at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature at National Chengchi University ( 政大台文所 Instagram: nccutwliterature ). Ariel contacted me, and I welcomed her to NCCU for an academic exchange.

After Ariel arrived in Taiwan, COVID broke out. Many people, including me, simply wanted to hide from the pandemic, but Ariel wanted to seize the opportunity to accomplish something meaningful during the days of confinement: to gather representative works by young-generation Taiwanese queer writers (who are much younger than I) who publish in Mandarin Chinese and introduce them to American readers. Ariel’s original idea eventually expanded into an enormously labor-intensive project. Yet, I should clarify that the person doing most of the heavy lifting was Ariel, not me.

Ariel asked me to recommend ten Taiwanese writers worth paying attention to, and then she found suitable translators to pair with them. For me, recommending authors was easy enough: Before the pandemic, I had published A History of Tongzhi Literature, a monograph on the field, so I was already familiar with queer/tongzhi literature across different generations.

Among the writers I recommended, Yang Shuang-zi and her Seasons of Bloom were among the first choices that came to mind—not because I possessed any extraordinary insight but because Yang Shuang-zi was obviously one of the most distinctive and remarkable voices in queer literature of the 2010s. Other Taiwanese scholars would likely have recommended her to Ariel as well.

For every writer I selected, Ariel found a translator—mostly young people living in the United States. The networking she managed was something I simply could not have done myself. As she negotiated with the AAWW, all I could really do was stand by and watch.

I also want to thank the colleagues and students at NCCU’s Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature who helped host Ariel during her stay. I learned that Ariel found a close circle of friends at New Bloom (Instagram: newbloommag) in Wanhua, Taipei. As I recall, she originally hoped to hold an in-person launch event for the AAWW feature there, but worsening pandemic conditions forced its cancellation. Still, Ariel did not give up. With tremendous determination, she successfully organized an online launch event for the AAWW special issue. As I recall, both Yang Shuang-zi and Lin King participated and spoke at the event.

Over the past two days, Yang Shuang-zi has been saying, “I really hope that more Taiwanese people and Taiwanese literary works can reach the world. We must come out together and let the world know Taiwan.” I completely agree, but Ariel might agree even more strongly. It was precisely because of this shared belief that during the pandemic, Ariel persuaded me to join the AAWW project.

That is the story.

At this joyful moment, when the 2006 Booker Prize has recognized a Taiwanese writer, I invite everyone to revisit the AAAW special issue:

[https://aaww.org/queer-time-a-special-notebook-of-taiwanese-tongzhi-literature]

Within this collection of extraordinary encounters and coincidences, you may discover the next Yang Shuang-zi and the next Lin King.

Chi Ta-wei 紀大偉

Associate Professor, Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature, National Chengchi University

Thursday, May 21, 2026