The climate fiction of writer Ming-Yi Wu resonates more than ever amid rising temperatures and the failure of governments in reducing carbon emissions. In his 2011 novel The Man with Compound Eyes, a giant trash vortex crashes onto Taiwan’s shores, foretelling what could probably happen if people around the world fail to protect biodiversity. Eminent science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin praised the novel for being a “new way of telling our new reality, beautiful, entertaining, frightening, preposterous, true”.

Wu began with nature writing, publishing and illustrating two poetic books about butterflies. In 2000, he started teaching Chinese literature and creative writing at Dong Hwa University, taking a sabbatical in 2006 to travel and write, finishing his third essay collection called So Much Water Close to Home. His 2015 novel The Stolen Bicycle, which revisits WW2 in Asia, is regarded as an allegory of Taiwan’s 400-year history of colonialism.