Fiona Sze-Lorrain Explained

Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Birth Place:Singapore
Occupation:Writer, poet, translator, editor, harpist
Language:English, French, Chinese
Nationality:French
Education:Columbia University (B.A.)
New York University (M.A.)
Paris-Sorbonne University (Ph.D., French)
École Normale de Musique de Paris
Spouse:Philippe Lorrain
Genre:Fiction, Poetry, Music

Fiona Sze-Lorrain (born 1980) is a Singaporean-born French writer, poet, literary translator, editor, and musician. She writes in English and translates from Chinese and French. Her fiction, poetry, and translations have received recognition from the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Best Translated Book Award, and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, among others. She has performed widely as a zheng harpist. Alongside her literary and artistic work, she is involved in negotiation, mediation, and conflict resolution. She is a judge for the 2025 International Dublin Literary Award.[1]

Early life and education

Born in Singapore, Sze-Lorrain grew up trilingual and has lived mostly in Paris and New York City. She spent her childhood in a hybrid of cultures, and her formative years in the United States and France.[2] She began studying classical piano and guzheng at a young age. A graduate of Columbia University, she obtained her master's degree from New York University and attended the École Normale de Musique de Paris before earning a PhD in French from the Paris-Sorbonne University.

Work

Sze-Lorrain's work involves fiction, poetry, translation, music, theater, and the visual arts. She writes mainly in English, and translates from Chinese and French. She also works with Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. She has written for venues related to fashion journalism, music and art criticism, and dramaturgy.[3]

In 2007, Sze-Lorrain worked with Gao Xingjian on a book of photography, essays, and poetry based on his film Silhouette/Shadow.[4]

Through Mark Strand, whose works she would later translate into French,[5] she found her poetic vocation, crediting him for having introduced her to poetry.[6] Sze-Lorrain's debut poetry collection, Water the Moon, appeared in 2010, followed by My Funeral Gondola in 2013.[7] Her third collection, The Ruined Elegance, was published by Princeton University Press in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets in 2016 and was named one of Library Journal 's Best Books in Poetry for 2015.[8] It was also a finalist for the 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.[9]

Published during the COVID-19 pandemic, her fourth collection Rain in Plural (Princeton University Press, 2020) contains many "poems that resonate with a political undertone, and they often suggest in the midst of great threats we persist and continue our important work, aware we alone are not the only or even the most vulnerable. The poems care about the larger world and our current crises."[10]

In response to the pandemic in Paris, Sze-Lorrain wrote a setting of new poems The Year of the Rat, set to music by Peter Child for unaccompanied voices, and virtually premiered in February 2021 by the solo artists of the Cantata Singers and Ensemble in Boston.[11] [12] Child collaborated with Sze-Lorrain again for her poem "Untouchable" in his song cycle A Golden Apple: Six Poems of Intimacy and Loss (2023), premiered by Tony Arnold in MIT.[13]

In 2023, Scribner published Fiona Sze-Lorrain's novel in stories Dear Chrysanthemums. Set in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Paris, and New York, following a cast of Asian women from 1946 to 2016,[14] the book is longlisted for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.[15]

Sze-Lorrain practices calligraphy and ink. Her poems and translations, handwritten in ink, were exhibited alongside ink drawings by Fritz Horstman from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in the art show, A Blue Dark, at The Institute Library (New Haven) in 2019.[16] [17]

Critical response

The New York Times Book Review praises her stories as "nimble, evocative."

The Rumpus said of her writing that it "serves as a vital midwife for the greater global understanding that will one day be born from today’s contracting and relaxing tensions between differing religions, cultures, and languages."[18]

Prairie Schooner describes her work as an "arc" that "navigates the sense of otherness" with poems that "burst at the seams with the customs, gastronomy, ancestry, literature, and art of the two cultures."[19]

Publishers Weekly calls her novel in stories "graceful" and "this author is one to watch" as she "effortlessly evokes the spirit of each setting" and "imbues her characters with haunting melancholy."[20]

Mekong Review writes that her fiction "resonates with a rich and efficient prosody. The narrative structure is creative, with each story placing an increasingly complete puzzle on top of the last."[21]

The Washington Post describes her translation as "lyrical."[22]

Translation

Sze-Lorrain is a translator of contemporary American, French, and Chinese poetry[23] and prose. Her work was shortlisted for the 2020 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry[24] and the 2016 Best Translated Book Award,[25] and longlisted for the 2014 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.[26] She serves on the committee of the Translators Association of the Society of Authors in the UK.[27]

Editor

She is a cofounder of Cerise Press (2009–13),[28] [29] a corresponding editor of Mānoa (2012–14), and an editor at Vif Éditions.

Residencies and fellowships

The recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, Ledig House, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, among others, she is the inaugural writer-in-residence at MALBA in Buenos Aires.[30] She has also been a visiting poet at various colleges and universities in United States and Europe. She is a 2019-20 Abigail R. Cohen Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination.[31]

Music

As a classical zheng harpist, Sze-Lorrain has performed worldwide.[32] She has served as a festival and competition judge.

Personal life

Sze-Lorrain lives in Paris with her husband Philippe Lorrain, cofounder of the French magazine Interférences (1974–1982), art director and independent publisher.[33]

Publications

Fiction

Poetry

Chapbook

Collaboration

Translations

Edited/Co-edited

CD

Film

Awards and honors

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Judges 2025. Dublin Literary Award.
  2. Web site: Theme and Variations of an Afterlife: An Interview with Fiona Sze-Lorrain. TriQuarterly.
  3. Web site: Fiona Sze-Lorrain | the Los Angeles Review of Books . 2014-12-23 . https://web.archive.org/web/20141223220753/http://lareviewofbooks.org/author/fiona-sze-lorrain . 2014-12-23 . dead .
  4. Web site: The Self In 'Silhouette'. December 15, 2007. Newsweek.
  5. Web site: Bibliographie nationale française BnF. 2017-05-08. 2018-05-27. https://web.archive.org/web/20180527205032/http://bibliographienationale.bnf.fr/Livres/CuM_13.h/cadre801-56.html. dead.
  6. Web site: Interview with Fiona Sze-Lorrain . 2023-12-30 . Off the Coast . en-US . I can’t say I have a poetic lineage, since I don’t seem to have a home culture, even though I write poetry only in English. I often credit the late Mark Strand for introducing me to poetry, when I was at a crossroad in life..
  7. Web site: Los Angeles Review of Books. 29 August 2014.
  8. Web site: Hoffert . Barbara . 2015-11-15 . Best Books 2015: Poetry . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20151115021905/http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2015/11/best-of/best-books-2015-poetry/ . 15 November 2015 . 2022-11-07.
  9. Web site: 2016-04-10 . Here are the 2016 L.A. Times Book Prize winners . 2021-06-03 . Los Angeles Times . en-US.
  10. Web site: Rain in Plural.
  11. Web site: Cantata Singers 2020-21 Season: February Digital Presentation. 6 February 2021 . www.youtube.com.
  12. Web site: Carmichael . Michelle . 2014-11-08 . Peter Child . 2023-11-16 . Massachusetts Institute of Technology . en.
  13. Web site: DeVoto . Mark . 2024-03-21 . Composing for 37 Years at MIT . 2024-09-25 . The Boston Musical Intelligencer . en-US.
  14. News: 2023-04-26 . Newly Published, From Rural Childhood to Anti-Ableist Parenting . en-US . The New York Times . 2023-10-07 . 0362-4331.
  15. Book: 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction Longlist, by By Grace Rosean and Biz Hyzy. Booklist Online.
  16. Web site: Dark Matters. Arts Council of Greater New. Haven. www.newhavenarts.org.
  17. Web site: Art Of Darkness | New Haven Independent. June 7, 2019. www.newhavenindependent.org.
  18. Web site: The Ruined Elegance by Fiona Sze-Lorrain. 2015-10-30. The Rumpus.net. en. 2020-05-08.
  19. Water the Moon (review). Christina. Cook. June 3, 2011. Prairie Schooner. 85. 2. 158–163. Project MUSE. 10.1353/psg.2011.0045. 72706490.
  20. Web site: Dear Chrysanthemums by Fiona Sze-Lorrain . 2023-11-16 . www.publishersweekly.com.
  21. Cook . Christina . May 2023 . No fragile flowers, these . 8 . 31 . 2024-08-28 . Mekong Review . en-US.
  22. News: 2021-10-03 . Review Poet Yu Xiuhua became a viral sensation. Her first book-length collection in English translation deserves to bring her an even bigger audience. . 2024-09-25 . Washington Post . en-US . 0190-8286.
  23. Book: The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature: Writings from the Mainland in the Long Twentieth Century. W. W. Norton. 2016. Huang. Yunte. New York. xi.
  24. Web site: Productions. Ti-Jean. 2020-05-14. ANNOUNCING THE SHORT LIST FOR THE DEREK WALCOTT PRIZE FOR POETRY. 2020-08-24. Derek Walcott. en.
  25. Web site: And the Finalists for the Best Translated Book Awards Are.... April 19, 2016.
  26. Web site: Longlists Announced for the 2014 PEN Literary Awards. May 5, 2014.
  27. Web site: 2020-05-09 . Committee - The Society of Authors . 2023-12-21 . en-GB.
  28. Web site: Cerise Press › Cerise Press: About. www.cerisepress.com.
  29. Web site: npadmin . 2013-07-09 . Cerise Press Final Issue . 2023-11-16 . NewPages.com . en-US.
  30. News: Fiona Sze-Lorrain, la poeta que llegó de Singapur, es fan de Pizarnik y toca el arpa - LA NACION. La Nación. 15 June 2018. La Nacion (Argentina). Blanc. Natalia.
  31. Web site: Institute for Ideas and Imagination Announces New Class of Fellows. Columbia News. 6 June 2023 .
  32. Web site: Musiques pour cithares zheng, kayagûm, kôto et tambour changgu | Maison des Cultures du Monde . 2014-12-23 . 2014-12-23 . https://web.archive.org/web/20141223192020/http://www.maisondesculturesdumonde.org/actualite/musiques-pour-cithares-zheng-kayagum-koto-et-tambour-changgu . dead .
  33. Web site: [anthologie permanente] Nathaniel Tarn]. Poezibao.

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