Geling Yan is a highly acclaimed novelist and screenwriter, who is well-established in both Chinese and English languages. She was born in Shanghai on November 16, 1958, and at the age of twelve, she began performing as a dancer. Yan served with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) for over a decade, starting at age twelve as a dancer in an entertainment troupe. After serving in the PLA, she pursued a career in writing and published her first novel in 1986.
Yan has written a steady stream of novels, short stories, novellas, essays, and scripts. Some of her best-known novels in English include "The Secret Talker," "Little Aunt Crane," "The Flowers of War," "The Banquet Bug," and "The Lost Daughter of Happiness." She has also published a novella and short story collection called "White Snake and Other Stories." Many of Yan's works have been adapted for film and television, including internationally distributed films "Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl" and "Siao Yu."
Geling Yan has received over 30 literary and film awards and has had her work translated into twenty-one languages. She holds a Master's in Fine Arts in Fiction Writing from Columbia College, Chicago. Yan has been a member of the Chinese Writers' Association (中国作家协会) and is now a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and of France's Société des Gens de Lettres. She is also affiliated with the Hollywood screenwriters' union, Writers' Guild of America, west. Yan went to the United States at the end of 1989 for graduate study and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. Since March 2020, she has been subject to an unofficial but effective ban in China due to her essay criticizing the Chinese government's handling of the COVID-19 crisis. She has recently founded a company, New Song Media, to produce films and to publish her works outside China.