Chen Nianxi

CHEN NIANXI (Born in 1970) once worked as a rock miner for more than 15 years across China before his health worsened and he was diagnosed with pneumoconiosis. He started writing poetry about three decades ago, and has emerged as one of the best-known practitioners of a relatively new genre in China: migrant worker literature. Chen was invited to speak in U.S. ivy league universities in 2016 after the release of a documentary called The Verse of Us, which features Chen and five other migrant worker poets. Besides poems and essays, he has widely published in China’s influential literary journals, his two critically acclaimed books are poetry collection Demolitions Record in 2019, and most recently, a book of essays, To Live Is to Shout at the Sky.