W.N. Herbert is Professor of Poetry & Creative Writing at Newcastle University. He writes in two tongues, English and Scots, and has co-translated poetry from a diverse range of other languages. Yang Lian is was one of the original Misty Poets who reacted against the strictures of the Cultural Revolution, and has lived in exile since 1989. He has an international reputation as one of China's leading contemporary poets. Brian Holton has taught Chinese language and literature at Edinburgh, Durham and Newcastle Universities and at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is the principal English-language translator of Yang Lian's poetry, and the only currently-publishing Chinese-Scots translator in the world. Qin Xiaoyu is a writer and editor, recognised as one of the most original and inuential of the younger critics now writing in China.
W.N. [Bill] Herbert is a highly versatile poet who writes both in English and Scots. Born in Dundee, he established his reputation with two English/Scots collections from Bloodaxe, Forked Tongue (1994) and Cabaret McGonagall (1996). These were followed by The Laurelude (1998), The Big Bumper Book of Troy (2002), Bad Shaman Blues (2006), Omnesia (2013) and The Wreck of the Fathership (2020). He has also published a critical study, To Circumjack MacDiarmid (OUP, 1992) drawn from his PhD research. His practical guide Writing Poetry was published by Routledge in 2010. He co-edited Strong Words: modern poets on modern poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2000) with Matthew Hollis, and Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2012) with Yang Lian. Bill Herbert is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Newcastle University and lives in a lighthouse overlooking the River Tyne at North Shields. He was Dundee's inaugural Makar from 2013 to 2018. Twice shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, his collections have also been shortlisted for the Forward Prize, McVities Prize, Saltire Awards and Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award. Four are Poetry Book Society Recommendations. In 2014 he was awarded a Cholmondeley Prize for his poetry, and an honorary doctorate from Dundee University. In 2015 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
