Li Juan

Li Juan, born in 1979 in the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and with her ancestral home in Lezhi, Sichuan, is a contemporary Chinese woman writer. She began writing in 1999, and her works are mainly prose, though they also touch on subjects such as world history. Her representative works include My Altay, Winter Pasture, the three-volume Goat Trail trilogy (Spring Pasture, Front Mountain Summer Pasture, and Deep Mountain Summer Pasture), and Distant Sunflower Fields; 47 of her works are held in this collection. Her prose is mostly drawn from everyday life in the pastoral and farming areas of northern Xinjiang. Her plain style and careful observation reveal the texture and warmth of life in the borderlands through ordinary people and natural scenes. Her writing has had a broad influence on contemporary Chinese prose, and she received the Prose and Essay Award at the 7th Lu Xun Literary Prize. Public information about her education and specific personal experiences is limited; the above introduction is based mainly on her works and known literary achievements.