1. Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist.
11 Facts About Madeleine Thien
1. 2.
Madeleine Thien's books have been translated into more than 25 languages.
3.
Madeleine Thien was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1974 to a Malaysian Chinese father and a Hong Kong Chinese mother.
4.
Madeleine Thien studied contemporary dance at Simon Fraser University and earned a Master's degree in Fine Arts specializing in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.
5.
Madeleine Thien made the decision to switch from dance to creative writing for a few reasons, but mainly due to the fact that she felt inadequate in talent, despite her passion for the art.
6.
Madeleine Thien was a finalist for Writers' Trust of Canada's RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in 1999, and in 2001 she was awarded the Emerging Writers Award from the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop for her short story collection Simple Recipes.
7.
Many of Madeleine Thien's works focus on the theme of time in connection to place and human emotion.
8.
In 2008, Madeleine Thien was invited to participate in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and the IWP State Department-funded 2010 study tour of the United States, which invited eight international writers, including Kei Miller, Eduardo Halfon, Billy Kahora and Khet Mar, to explore the unresolved legacies of American history.
9.
Madeleine Thien wrote about the program's abrupt closure, and Hong Kong's crackdown on freedom of speech, in an essay for The Guardian.
10.
In 2016, Madeleine Thien objected to the University of British Columbia's handling of complaints made against Steven Galloway, a professor in the Creative Writing department until he was fired.
11.
Madeleine Thien currently teaches in the Brooklyn College MFA Program.