Hong Ke (the pen-name of Yang Hongke) first came to public attention in 2000 when his breakthrough story ‘Blowing Smoke’ won the Lu Xun National Excellent Short Story Award and he was recognised as a Most Promising Newcomer by the Feng Mu Prize.

The author, who was born in Qishan County on the Zhou Plateau in 1962, received his higher education in Baoji and spent a decade (1986-96) teaching and carrying out cultural research in Xinjiang, a geographically and ethnically diverse region stretching for more than 1.6 million km2. On returning to his home province, he taught at Shaanxi Normal University, while continuing to evoke the vast northwest in his magic realism-suffused stories, novellas and novels. His longer works include Rider to the West, Tiger! Tiger!, One Hundred Birds Worship the Phoenix and the Mao Dun Prize shortlisted Kalabu Sandstorm.

Hong Ke passed away in Xi’an shortly after the 2018 Spring Festival. His short stories and novellas were posthumously added to the prestigious China Classics International list as selected by the state. A collection of his stories translated into English, The Howl of the Wolf, was published by Valley Press in 2019.