Kan Yao-ming


Kan Yao-ming is a Taiwanese author from Miaoli County. He graduated from the Chinese department of Tunghai University. He received Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and English Literature from National Dong Hwa University. Before becoming a full-time fiction writer, Kan worked as a reporter, as a middle school teacher, and as a playwright of a small theater. Widely recognized as one of the best authors of his generation, Kan has received various literary awards, including the United Daily News Literature Prize, the,, and the United Daily New Novelist Prize. In 2010, his novel won the Award of Taipei International Book Fair, and in 2015, his The Pangcah Girl won the First Prize of Taiwan Literary Award.
Several of his novels have been adapted into television series. He has also served as writer-in-residence at Providence University.

Writing career

Owing to his Hakka origin, Kan's writings are often colored with Hakka language, culture and history. In addition, Kan often uses dense imagery while appropriating elements from fairy tale, fable, and folklore. As a result, the feelings of humans and animals become interchangeable but at the same time remain distinct; the complex interactions among Taiwan's various ethnic and social groups are revealed as well. Kan is best known for the following two books:
The School of Water-ghosts and the Otter Who Lost His Mother melds various fairy-tale elements together; it received the China Times Annual Top 10 Book Award, with critics calling it that year's "most creative novel".
Killing Ghosts, a historical novel, deals with issues of Taiwanese identities resulting from fifty years of the Japanese occupation and from the iron-fist rule of the KMT after World War II. Kan Yao-ming, against the backdrops of the Kominka Movement and the 228 Incident, depicts the insanity of that era as well as the unfailing vitality of people living on the island of Taiwan, be they post-World War II Mainland Chinese emigres, or the natives formerly colonized by the Japanese.

Publications

Novels

  • Mysterious Train 《神秘列車》
  • The School of Water-ghosts and the Otter Who Lost His Mother 《水鬼學校和失去媽媽的水獺》
  • Killing Ghosts 《殺鬼》
  • Story of a Funeral 《喪禮上的故事》
  • The Girl and the Woodcutter 《邦查女孩》
  • The Summer General Winter Came 《冬將軍來的夏天》
  • Becoming Bunun 《成為真正的人》

Essays

  • Together with Li Chong-jian, ''A School with No Walls: An Independent Learning Paradise''