Lau Yee Wa
Lau Yee-Wa is one of Hong Kong’s most exciting up-and-coming fiction authors.
Lau began her literary career writing poetry during her undergraduate years at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where she obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Chinese Language and Literature and her Master’s degree in Philosophy.
She then went on to earn a Postgraduate Diploma in Secondary Education from The Education University of Hong Kong.
After serving as an editor in a publishing house for five years, she transitioned into writing fiction and pursuing a career in education; presently, she divides her time between creative writing and working as a part-time writing instructor on a contractual basis.
Lau powerfully tiptoed onto the local literary scene in 2016, when her short story “The Shark” won the prestigious Hong Kong Champion of the Awards for Creative Writing in Chinese.
The prize typically has been awarded to more established authors, and Lau’s win took the Hong Kong literary community by surprise, stunning even Lau herself.
The judges, however, were impressed by the story’s subject matter, which investigates the gap in values between
...different generations of Hongkongers, probing the relationship between a conservative elderly man and his rebellious son; Lau explains she wrote the story to attempt to understand her father’s support for the Hong Kong government.
Three years later, she published her debut novel, Tongueless, which centers on the suicide of a Chinese-language teacher who becomes so obsessed with attaining proficiency in Mandarin that she literally tries to drill the language into her brain.
Several Hong Kong writers and scholars have praised the novel for its unflinching portrayal of the harsh working conditions of secondary school teachers caught in a brutal environment where the rules of survival are constantly being rewritten.
Famed mystery novelist Chan Ho-Kei writes that Tongueless “shocked me as much as any masterpiece I have ever read.” Tongueless has been favorably compared to Chan Ho-Kei’s crime novel Second Sister, though Tongueless is not a typical mystery novel—Chan himself describes the book as an amalgam of literary fiction, noir, psychological suspense, and horror.
Meanwhile, renowned author Dorothy Tse draws comparisons between the novel and Xiao Hong’s 1936 short story “Hands” for its depiction of a protagonist who is cruelly ostracized for not fitting in.
Though Lau is still in the early stages of her writing career, her work is steadily garnering acclaim both within Hong Kong and beyond.
She is known for creating complex and vivid characters, crafting insightful and provocative stories that explore often-overlooked themes, including complicity and complacency.
As more people come to know her writing, Lau has been invited to participate in several literary events in Hong Kong, including the panels “Emerging Voices” and “Hong Kong Digital Noir” for the 2020 Hong Kong International Literary Festival.
Currently, Lau is at work on her second book, a science fiction novel about government surveillance.
Bibliography of Fiction Published in Chinese Novel:《失語》Tongueless.
Hong Kong: Wheatear Publishing Company, 2019.
Short Fiction: 1.
〈真神〉“True Gods” (serialized fiction).《明報‧周日短篇》Ming Pao Sunday Shorts (December 2020–January2021).
2.
〈謝心言〉“Tse Sum Yin.”《方圓》O-Square7 (Winter 2020): 65–87.
3.
〈艇〉“Boat.”《我香港，我街道》My Hong Kong, My Street Taipei: ECUS Publishing House, 2020.
355–376.
https://bit.ly/2Dsm9Bg 4.
〈鯊魚〉“The Shark.”《第二十二輯香港文學展顏‧二零一六年中文文學創作獎獲獎作品集（修訂本）》Twenty-Second Edition of the Hong Kong Literature Exhibition: Collection of Award-Winning Works for Creative Writing in Chinese in 2016 (Revised Edition).
Hong Kong: Hong Kong Public Library, 2019.
57–75.
5.
“MacBook.”《字花‧別字》Fleurs des lettres‧Other Words 4 (January 2018).
https://zihua.org.hk/magazine/issue_4/article/macbook/ 6.
〈城門河〉“Shing Mun River.”《香港文學》Hong Kong Literature 389 (May 2017).
http://www.hongkongliterary.com/dzdetail.jsp?id=9704&pid=34463294&dzid=50447934&nav=1 Translations: At present, Lau’s work exists only in Chinese; it has not yet been translated into any other language.
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