Born in Shenyang, Donbei in 1965, Xu Kun received a Ph.D. from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  Since 1993, she has published more than ten novels and essay collections including novellas, Vernacular Chinese, Vanguard, Hot Dog, and Tongtianhe, novels including August A Capriccio, Twenty-two Nights in Spring, and Roots of Wild Grass, and a play, Blue Fox.  She is the recipient of the first Fengmu Literary Award  and the first Women¡¯s Literature Award.  She is also the  four-time winner of the Novel Monthly Vernacular Chinese Award as well as the winner of numerous literary awards given by such magazines as People¡¯s Literature, Chinese Author, and Selected Novel.  Her works have been translated and published in English, French, German, Russian, and Japanese.