Huang Fan was born in 1963 in rural Hubei province. He is a leading writer of fiction and poetry, known for his unflinching confrontation of contemporary issues in China with dry humor and dark lyricism. His fictional works include the novels The Eleventh Commandment, The Floating Colors, Until Youth Disappears; the short story collection Girls’ School Teacher and the essay collection, Chinese Wander. When his novel The Eleventh Commandment was serialised in Sina.com.cn’s literary section, it received over 3 million hits and was rated one of two “must-read” novels for young people to read. His poetry collections in Chinese include Elegies of Nanjing, Selected Poems of a Decade and Moon Losing Sleeping. His poem ‘Middle Age’ was included in One Hundred Poems for One Hundred Years of Modern Poetry, and the editor of United Daily News called him the Mainland poet of most interest to the Taiwanese reader. His prizes include the Writer’s Golden Prize for Short Story, the Zijin Mountain Literary Prize for a Long Story, the China Good Poetry Prize, the Beijing Literary Prize for Poetry and the Jinling Literary Prize for Poetry. Huang Fan’s works have been translated into English, Italian, German, Greek, French, Japanese, Farsi and Korean.