Photo: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images (2014)
Sample of authors
Qiu Xiaolong
Qiu Xiaolong is a Chinese author, poet, translator and scholar. He was born in Shanghai and grew up in post-revolution China. During the Cultural Revolution, when students were forced into the countryside to "learn from the peasants", Qiu remained in the city as he was often bedridden due to a respiratory problem. With nothing to do during long, tedious days he began to practice tai chi in the...
Sample of authors
Henry, O.
O. Henry was born as William Sidney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina. He later changed the spelling of his middle name to "Sydney". His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a physician. When Porter's mother died of tuberculosis in 1865, father and son went to live with William's grandmother where he was chiefly raised by an aunt due to his father's heavy drinking. As a teenager, he trained at...
