Li Juan was born in Xinjiang in 1979 and grew up in Sichuan Province. Her writing career began in 1999 as a newspaper columnist for newspapers like Southern Weekly and Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po, and she is now widely regarded as one of the best narrative nonfiction writers of her generation. She has won several awards for Winter Pasture, including the People’s Literature Award. She lives in Xinjiang, China. This is her first book to be translated in the United States.