Ouyang Yu

Ouyang Yu (Chinese: 歐陽昱; born 1955) is a contemporary Chinese Australian author, translator and academic.

Early life and education

Ouyang Yu was born in the People's Republic of China, arriving in Australia in 1991 to study for a Ph. D. at La Trobe University, which he completed in 1995.

Ouyang's literary output has been prodigious. Apart from several collections of poetry and a novel he has translated authors as diverse as Christina Stead, Xavier Herbert, Germaine Greer, and David Malouf.

He also edits (or edited) Otherland, a bilingual English-Chinese literary journal.

Yu's poem "New Accents" is one of the prescribed texts in Module A of the HSC subject, English Standard.

In 2015 Ouyang was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Translation Prize,

In 2019 his poem "New Accents" was included as a prescribed text for English Standard.

In 2021 he won the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Collection at the Queensland Literary Awards for Terminally Poetic.

Also in 2021, he was a finalist for the Writer's Prize in the Melbourne Prize for Literature.

Moon Over Melbourne and other Poems (Papyrus Publishing, 1995) ISBN 1-875934-04-9
Songs of the Last Chinese Poet (Wild Peony, 1997) ISBN 0-9586526-4-3
Two Hearts, Two Tongues and Rain-Coloured Eyes (University of Hawaii, 2002) ISBN 1-876957-02-6
New and Selected Poems (Salt, 2004) ISBN 1-876857-35-8
Listening To (Vagabond Press, 2006)
Reality Dreams (Picaro Press, 2008)
The Kingsbury Tales (Brandl and Schlesinger, 2008)
Terminally Poetic (Ginninderra, 2020) ISBN 9781760419516

On the Smell of an Oily Rag: Speaking English, Thinking Chinese and Living Australian (Wakefield Press, 2008) ISBN 978-1-86254-765-0
Chinese in Australian Fiction, 1888–1988 (Cambria Press, 2008) ISBN 9781604975161
"Lower downs, rubbish and low poetry". Overland. 194: 43–46. Autumn 2009.
"You in the I": The Chinese-Australian writer Ouyang Yu speaks to Prem Poddar, Beyond the Yellow Pale: Essays and Criticism, (Otherland Publishing, 2010)