Yang Chia-hsien

Yang started writing when she was in high school. Although she won the first prize of the poetry category in the writing contest held by her school, her early works were mostly prose. She started creating a large amount of poems when she was at university. The popularization of the Internet from late 1990s to early 2000s provided her with the platform to share her works with the world. Yang frequently posted her works on poetry BBS and her blog, from 1998 to 2002, she has published around 230 poems and 90 prose online. Since the establishment in 1998, in three years' time her blog had been viewed for over 260 thousand times, which made Yang an internet self-publishing celebrity and pioneer in Taiwan. In 2003, Yang published her first poetry collection, The Civilization of Holding One’s Breath; the next year she published her first prose collection, Sea Breeze and Sparks. After getting her PhD degree, Yang works as an assistant professor of the Chinese Literature Department at the National Tsing Hua University. She has published various critical article and research books of contemporary Chinese and Taiwanese literature. To promote Chinese and Taiwanese literature and poetry, Yang occasionally gives lectures at different literary events. Also, she has been one of the curators of the Taipei Poetry Festival since 2011.

Yang Chia-hsien (Chinese: 楊佳嫻 ; born 15 June 1978) is a contemporary Taiwanese writer, poet, essayist, and literary critic. She is also an assistant professor of Department of Chinese Literature at the National Tsing Hua University. Yang sees Lu Xun, Zhang Ai-ling and Yang Mu as the influences of her writings. Yang is regarded as an iconic poet of the cyber-age. Her works, including The Civilization of Holding One’s Breath and Sea Breeze and Sparks, are described as incorporating classical concepts and modern perceptions. Yang was also the youngest poet to be included in the Comprehensive Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Literature in Taiwan(Vol. 2), and the youngest entrant of the Thirty Years of Elite Taiwan Literature: Thirty New Poets.

Born in 1978, Yang Chia-hsien experienced Taiwan's transition from a militarized society to a democratic, free society after the lifting of martial law in 1987 when she was a child. Yang was born and raised in Kaohsiung, a city in southern Taiwan. Her life in Kaohsiung is mentioned in some of her works and interviews. In her prose The Flowing Room, Yang writes about her teenage and her family; Yang and her younger sister lived with their parents in an apartment, but her parents divorced when she was studying at university. In her school days, Yang immersed herself in the classical Song Poetry, as well as modernist poetry such as the works of Xi Murong and Chen Yizhi. These works have great influence on Yang's poetry. She was also the editor of the school newspaper in high school. She moved to Taipei when she was eighteen to attend the National Chengchi University. After earning the BA in Chinese degree, Yang continued to study towards her master and PhD in Chinese degrees at the National Taiwan University.