Ouyang Yu graduated from Wuhan Institute of Hydro-Electric Engineering (now Wuhan University) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and American Literature, then completed a Master of Arts degree in Australian and English literature at East China Normal University in Shanghai. From 1983 to 1986 he worked as an interpreter and translator in China and as a lecturer in English at Wuhan University from 1989 to 1991.
After coming to Australia, Ouyang undertook his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree at La Trobe University on the representation of the Chinese in Australian fiction. Since then his literary work has appeared regularly in most major Australian and many overseas literary journals. In addition to his poetry, criticism and English translations of Chinese literature, he has translated many major Australian works into Chinese, including The Shock of the New by Robert Hughes and The Female Eunuch and The Whole Woman by Germaine Greer.
In 1995 he was awarded a translation grant by Arts Victoria for The Ancestor Game by Alex Miller and the following year received a major grant from the National Book Council for a translation of The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead. Also in late 1994 he co-founded Otherland (Australia's first Chinese-language literary journal) with Ding Xiaoqi. In 1998 he published his first book of Chinese-language poetry and was awarded the major grant for literary translation from the Australian Society of Authors for a translation of Capricornia by Xavier Herbert. In 2000 he received another translation grant from the Australian Society of Authors. His first English novel, The Eastern Slope Chronicle was completed with assistance from a grant provided by Arts Victoria in 1999. He also won a grant from Arts Victoria to assist him in the writing of his second novel, published in 2010 as The English Class and named one of the Best Books of 2010 in the Australian Book Review and The Age as well as the Sydney Morning Herald. This novel has since won the Community Relations Award in the 2011 NSW Premier’s Literature Award, and was short-listed for the Community Relations Award and Christina Stead Fiction Award in the 2011 NSW Premier’s Literature Award, the 2011 Western Australia Premier’s Literature Award and the 2011 Queensland Premier’s Literature Award. In 2012, it was short-listed for Melbourne Prize. The writing of his third novel, Loose: A Wild History, was also supported by an Arts Victoria grant and was published in 2011, completing his Yellow Town Trilogy of novels.
Ouyang's work has received numerous awards and prizes. In 1988 and 1989 he received third prize in the East China Normal University Award for Social Science Research. In 1990 he won second prize in the First National Ge Baoquan Award for Foreign Short Stories in Chinese Translation for his translation of 'A Report from the Shadow Industry' by Peter Carey. In 1999, he was awarded a grant by AsiaLink to be writer in residence at Beijing University, China, as part of AsiaLink Residence Program, to write his non-fictional book, On the Smell of an Oily Rag: Notes on the Margins. In 2000 his Chinese-language novel The Angry Wu Zili received the Award for Excellence in Fiction from the Federation of Overseas Chinese Associations, Taiwan, as did his critical work Representing the Other: Chinese in Australian Fiction: 1888-1988, written in Chinese, in the category of Social and Humane Studies in 2001. In October 2003 Ouyang's self-published hand-made collection of English poetry, Foreign Matter, received the Award for Self-published Books in the category of poetry in Fastbooks Self-publishing Competition at the 4th Australian Publishers and Authors Bookshow. In 2013, Ouyang was shortlisted for the Translation Prize in the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards and he also won an Honour Prize (for complete works) in Naji Naaman's literary prizes 2013. In 2016, he won an Australia Council grant for writing a book of bilingual poetry and a special award from the Australia-China Council for 'his contributions to Australian Studies in China through major translations and original works of scholarship'. In both 2018 and 2019, he was selected as one of the top ten poets in China by Xiron Poetry Club, part of Beijing Xiron Books Limited.
Ouyang’s poetry has been included in the Best Australian poetry collections 7 times between 2004 and 2011, and has been included in major Australian anthologies, such as The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry (2009) and The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (2010).
Also a member of AliTra, the Victorian Writers' Centre and the Australian-Chinese Writers Association as well as the Australian Society of Authors, Ouyang has acted as a Coordinator for the Chinese Arts Festival in Victoria. He judged the Victorian Premier's Literary Award in 2000 in the literary translation category and has examined Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) theses on literature for various Australian universities. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Faculty of Arts, Deakin University (1999-2001) and a postdoctoral fellow at Deakin University (2003). He was Professor of Australian Literature in the English Department, Wuhan University, People's Republic of China (2005-2008), as well as writer in residence at ANU, ADFA and UC in 2007. He is now professor of English at Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, China.
As a translator, he has also translated Robert Hughes's Nothing If Not Critical: Selected Essays on Art & Artists into Chinese (Nanjing University Publisher, 2016). In 2018, he translated Eve Herold's Beyond Human: How Cutting-Edge Science Is Extending Our Lives (Beijing United Publishing Company, February 2018) and Elephant: Poems of D.H. Lawrence (Sichuan Art and Literature Publishing House, April 2018). In 2018, he published an interview with Kazakh poet Ardak Nurgaz in Pujiang Literature (浦江文学, Vol. 8, Winter issue, 2018, pp. 79-83).
In 2019, he contributed an essay on photographer Liu Bolin's 'photography of disappearances' to the Ballarat International Foto Biennale's exhibition of Liu's work ('Disappearing for the Camera: On Liu Bolin’s Photography of Disappearances', in Liu Bolin/Camouflage 刘勃麟伪装, Ballarat International Foto Biennale, in 2019, pp. 29 and 31 [English text] and pp. 25 and 27 [Chinese text]). He also provided the Chinese translation of Emma Thomson's curatorial notes on the exhibition (ibid, pp.17, 19, 21, and 23).
For additional information on works not individually indexed on AustLit, including translations, see Notes below.
Ouyang also maintains a blog at https://youyang2.blogspot.com.
Australian Poetry Library Author Entry
