Chiou Charng-Ting

Introduction

Chiou, Charng-Ting graduated from the Creative Writing Department of the Institute of Chinese Literature, National Dong Hwa University, then worked at the Friendly Book Cooperative before starting the doctoral program at the Institute of Children's Literature, National Taitung University. She received the first prize of the United Daily News Literary Award for Fiction by A New Author, the Ministry of Education's Literature and Arts Creative Award, the King Car Fantasy Fiction Award, and the Lin Rong-San Literature Award, among others. She has also received the Ministry of Culture's Artistic Rising Artist Subsidy and the Youth Creative Subsidy. She has published several novels, including Monster Country, The Day the Swan Died, Kingdom of Dreams, The Elf's Paradise, New Gods, and The Whistle Score. Recently, she published a full-length fantasy novel, The Poem of the Animal Spirit.

Resident planning

The name of the project is taken from Italo Calvino's book, Difficult Loves. “Difficult love” can be the difficulty of loving an individual for who they are, whether it is due to class, gender, values, physical or mental condition or personal wealth, or simply the absurdity of everyday life that prevents love from occurring. It may also be that an individual has difficulty loving a particular group of people, such as a woman who has difficulty loving a jerk, an able-bodied person who has difficulty loving someone who is physically-challenged, or other situations where a love prospect does not live up to someone else’ preferences. It will be a short story of roughly 4,000 words in length about a London theater worker named Yasuko, who, in her role as Lady Macbeth, explores her own fear of and longing for the male species. During the rehearsal of her own rewritten version of Macbeth, she will encounter difficult love in various forms. At the same time, the visions that the protagonist often sees in her dreams represent her lost memories and difficult love as experienced by transgender people. This novella will also be a spin-off of the author's new novel, Poem of the Animal Spirit, which can also be read as a stand-alone story.