The National Endowment for the Arts announced their Literary Translation Fellowships recently, with one of the fellowships going to Jeffrey Yang for his translation of City Gate Open Up 城門開, a “lyrical autobiography” by Bei Dao 北島. Here is the NEA’s announcement:

A $25,000 fellowship to Jeffrey Yang (Beacon, NY) to support the translation from the Chinese of City Gate Open Up, a lyrical autobiogaphy by poet Bei Dao. This project aims to translate the lyrical prose memoir of his childhood and adolescence in Beijing, where he was born in 1949. It is a book not only of the poet as a child, but of the metropolis itself, coming alive through the memories of its neighborhoods and residents, gardens, and temples, schools and music, and vibrant ways of life. Since the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, [Bei] Dao had been living in forced exile, moving from country to country, forbidden by the Chinese government to return to his homeland. The compulsion to write this book began in 2001, when Dao was allowed back into China to see his sick father.

Click on the image above for more information about other fellowship winners, and to download The Art of Empathy, the NEA’s new collection of essays about the importance of literary translation.