Author You Yoyo and translator Jeremy Tiang will read from and talk bout Yu’s fiction debut, Invisible Kitties: A Feline Study of Fluid Mechanics or the Spurious Incidents of the Cats in the Night-Time.  “Chinese poet Yu’s fiction debut is utterly charming, particularly so for cat-lovers, who might argue that every bit of magic here is absolutely true. Award-winning translator Tiang ensures smooth, playful anglophone access. During 60 pithy chapters–not unlike bursts of irresistible energy–Yu interprets endless kitty antics while her whimsical black-and-white sketches enhance every chapter, with every page framed in inviting pawprints.” — Booklist (starred review)

Yu Yoyo is an acclaimed poet and visual/audio artist from Sichuan, China. Her work has been featured in various literary journals and anthologies. She is the author of the poetry collections Seven Years, Me as Bait, wind can’t, and Cat is a Cloud. She won the 2017 Henry Luce Translation Fellowship and her poems have been translated into English, Korean, Russian, French, Japanese, and Swedish. A selection of her poems was translated and published by Poetry Translation Centre in her first English collection, My Tenantless Body. She lives in Chengdu.

Jeremy Tiang (he/they) is a novelist, playwright and literary translator. He has translated over thirty books from across the Chinese-speaking world. Most recently, his translation of Zou Jingzhi’s Ninth Building was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023. His novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018, and his short story collection It Never Rains on National Day was shortlisted for the same prize. In 2022, Tiang was the Princeton University Translator-in-Residence and an International Booker Prize judge. He has also served as a judge for the National Book Award (Translated Literature). Originally from Singapore, he now divides his time between Flushing, Queens and Sarasota, Florida.

This event is co-sponsored by the University of Iowa International Writing Program.