Authors

Born in Tianjin, Chinese author Hao Jingfang gained her undergraduate degree from Tsinghua University’s Department of Physics and her PhD from the same university in Economics and Management in 2012. From 2011-12, she worked as a part-time economist for the IMF. Alongside her writing, she is also a project officer at the China Development Research Foundation.

In 2002, as a high school student, Hao Jingfang was awarded First Prize in the New Concept Writing Competition. Her fiction has appeared in various publications, including Mengya, Science Fiction World, and ZUI Found.

In 2016, her story ‘Folding Beijing‘ received the Hugo Award for best science-fiction novelette, beating Stephen King, who was also nominated in the same category. She is the second author to have won a Hugo Award, following Liu Cixin, whom she cites as one of her inspirations, along with Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan and Arthur Clarke.

‘Folding Beijing’ is part of a short story collection, The Depth of Loneliness. In 2016, she also released a second collection, Going Far, and a science-fiction novel, Stray Skies, which combines two earlier books, Wandering Maerth and Return to Charon. Her third collection, Mirror of Man, which comprises essays and short stories on the subject of artificial intelligence, was published in 2017.

In April 2020, the English-language edition of Stray Skies, translated by Ken Liu, is published under the title Vagabonds (US: Saga, UK: Head of Zeus). It was included in the New York Times most anticipated books of 2020.