Xiaolu
Guo
Years: 2018, 2026
Xiaolu Guo is an award winning novelist and film director. She has published a dozen books with Random House. Her novels include A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize), and I Am China. Her memoir Once Upon A Time In The East won the National Book Critics Circle Award 2017 and shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her nonfiction Radical was published by Vintage 2023, followed by My Battle of Hastings. Her 2025 novel Call Me Ishmaelle is a retelling of Melville’s Moby Dick. Named as a Granta’s Best of Young British Novelist, she also directed several feature films including the Golden Leopard Winner of her feature She, a Chinese and MoMA New Directors’ selection We Went to Wonderland. Her new non-fiction Everyday Tang will be published by The New York Review of Books in 2026. Guo has been a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York, and a Fischer Professor at the Free University in Berlin. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Xiaolu Guo is an award winning novelist and film director. She has published a dozen books with Random House. Her novels include A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize), and I Am China. Her memoir Once Upon A Time In The East won the National Book Critics Circle Award 2017 and shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her nonfiction Radical was published by Vintage 2023, followed by My Battle of Hastings. Her 2025 novel Call Me Ishmaelle is a retelling of Melville’s Moby Dick. Named as a Granta’s Best of Young British Novelist, she also directed several feature films including the Golden Leopard Winner of her feature She, a Chinese and MoMA New Directors’ selection We Went to Wonderland. Her new non-fiction Everyday Tang will be published by The New York Review of Books in 2026. Guo has been a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York, and a Fischer Professor at the Free University in Berlin. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
