Chinese-British novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo will be teaching as ninth „Friedrich Dürrenmatt Guest Professor for World Literature“ at the University of Bern. She will give a weekly seminar on migrant literature in the postcolonialism.
Xiaolu Guo, born 1973 in the south of China, studied at the Beijing Film Academy and later at the National Film and TV School in London, where she has been living and working since 2002. Before her breakthrough as a novelist, Xiaolu Guo gained recognition with her documentary and short films. Her eighth film, She, a Chinese was awarded the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2009.
Also as a writer Guo is internationally successful: In her debut novel Village of Stone (2005) Guo tells the story of a young woman in Beijing who is torn between cultural traditions and the wish for a new life. Later, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (2008), UFO in Her Eyes (2009) and I am China (2015) followed. Her latest book, the autobiography Once Upon A Time in the East (2017) was published last year. Xiaolu Guo writes in English and Chinese, her texts have been translated into 27 languages.
From February to June 2018, Xiaolu Guo will spend the spring term in Switzerland as Friedrich Dürrenmatt Guest Professor at the University of Bern. She will give a weekly seminar on «Hybridism, on Migrant Literature» where she will discuss novels of authors who write in a foreign language with her students. Her goal is to find out how artists move between cultural identities, languages and places of residence. Besides teaching her class, Xiaolu Guo will participate in public readings and workshops.
