Snow Plain

Duo Duo was recently named the 2010 laureate of the ＄50,000 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the only international literary prize from the United States for which poets, playwrights, and novelists are given equal consideration. The Neustadt is widely considered to be the most prestigious international prize after the Nobel Prize for Literature and is often referred to as the ＂American Nobel＂ because of its record of twenty-seven laureates, candidates, or jurors who in the past thirty-nine years have been awarded Nobels following their involvement with the Neustadt. Duo Duo is the twenty-first Neustadt laureate and the first Chinese author to win the prize.

Chinese poet Mai Mang, who currently teaches Chinese literature at Connecticut College, served on the Neustadt Prize jury and nominated Duo Duo for the award. He notes that ＂Duo Duo is a great lone traveler crossing borders of nation, language, and history, as well as a resolute seer of some of the most basic, universal human values that have often been shadowed in our troubled modern time: creativity, nature, love, dreams, and wishful thinking.＂

Robert Con Davis-Undiano, WLT’s executive director, adds that ＂Duo Duo is foremost among a group of first-rate Chinese poets who deserve serious attention and recognition in the West.＂

Duo Duo (Li Shizheng) was born in Beijing in 1951. He started writing poetry in the early 1970s as a youth during the isolated midnight hours of the Cultural Revolution, and much of his early writing critiqued the Cultural Revolution from an insider’s point of view in a highly sophisticated, original style.

Duo Duo: Duo Duo (Li Shizheng) was born in Beijing in 1951. He started writing poetry in the early 1970s as a youth during the isolated, midnight hours of the Cultural Revolution, and many of his early poems critiqued the Cultural Revolution from an insider’s point of view in a highly sophisticated, original style. Often considered part of the ＂Misty＂ school of contemporary Chinese poetry, he nevertheless kept a cautious distance from any literary trends or labeling. After witnessing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Duo Duo left China and did not return for more than a decade. Upon his return to China in 2004, the literary community received him with honor and praise. Duo Duo currently resides on Hainan Island and teaches at Hainan University in China.

John Crespi: John A. Crespi is Luce Associate Professor of Chinese and Chair of Core Cultures at Colgate University