Jade Ladder

W.N. Herbert is Professor of Poetry & Creative Writing at Newcastle University. He writes in two tongues, English and Scots, and has co-translated poetry from a diverse range of other languages. Yang Lian is was one of the original Misty Poets who reacted against the strictures of the Cultural Revolution, and has lived in exile since 1989, making London his permanent home in recent years. He has an international reputation as one of China's leading contemporary poets. Brian Holton has taught Chinese language and literature at Edinburgh, Durham and Newcastle Universities and at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is the principal English-language translator of Yang Lian's poetry, and the only currently-publishing Chinese-Scots translator in the world. Qin Xiaoyu is a writer and editor, recognised as one of the most original and inuential of the younger critics now writing in China.