Transcript Staff

A poet considered by many to be one of the major writers of modern China, Bei Dao, will be the featured author of the 2008 Puterbaugh Conference on World Literature.

"Bei Dao is internationally acknowledged for employing a poetic and narrative voice that has given rise to social change and a unique artistic idiom," said David Draper Clark, editor in chief of World Literature Today, which will sponsor the conference April 3 and 4.

WLT is the University of Oklahoma's bimonthly magazine of international literature and culture. WLT is partnering with the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art to show the film series, "Three Cinemas of China," and will serve as hosts for a reception for the exhibit, "China: Insights," which features seven photographers from mainland China.

The conference, which is free and open to the public, begins 9 a.m. April 3 in the Scholars Room of Oklahoma Memorial Union, 900 Asp Ave., with a panel discussion focusing on Chinese politics and featuring Peter Hays Gries and Mark W. Frazier, both associate professors of international and area studies at OU. Moderator will be Daniel Simon, WLT's assistant director and managing editor.

The second panel, which begins at 10 that morning, will focus on Chinese culture and language and will feature Ming Chao Gui and Ning Yu, both associate professors of modern languages, literatures and linguistics at OU, and Yunte Huang, a professor of English at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Moderator will be Pamela Genova, chair of OU's Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Linguistics.

The conference will continue 9:30 a.m. April 4 in the union's Molly Shi Boren Ballroom with another panel discussion featuring Dao and contemporary literature and moderated by David Clark, WLT's editor in chief.

Panelists will be Dian Li, an associate professor at the University of Arizona; Yibing Huang, a professor of English at Connecticut College; and Jonathan Stalling, OU assistant professor of English.

Dao will deliver the keynote address 11 a.m. Friday in the union ballroom.

Dao was born Zhao Zhenkai on Aug. 2, 1949, in Beijing, China. His pseudonym means "Northern Island" and was suggested by a friend as a reference to the poet's province in northern China as well as his typical solitude.

Dao became one of the foremost poets of the Misty School, a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution.

In 1978, Dao and colleague Mang Ke founded the underground literary magazine Jintian (Today), which the Chinese government banned from publication in 1980. Dao's poem Huida ("The Answer") was taken as a defiant anthem of the pro-democracy movement and appeared on posters during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. During the 1989 movement, Dao was in Berlin as a writer-in-residence and was not allowed to return to China. He spent the next 18 years in exile, living in eight different countries.

Dao's books of poetry include "Unlock" (2000), "At the Sky's Edge: Poems 1991-1996" (1996), "Landscape Over Zero" (1995), "Forms of Distance" (1994), "Old Snow" (1991) and "The August Sleepwalker" (1988).

He also is the author of the short-story collection "Waves" (1985) and two essay collections, "Blue House" (2000) and "Midnight's Gate" (2005), an excerpt from which appeared in the May 2005 issue of World Literature Today under the title "New York Variations." His work has been translated into more than 30 languages.

Dao's awards and honors include the Aragana Poetry Prize from the International Festival of Poetry in Casablanca, the Pen/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.