Ye Yonglie, a Shanghai writer and a graduate of Peking University, was born in 1940. He started publishing poetry in 1951, and published his first book in 1960. Since then he has authored over one hundred books, mostly nonfiction about contemporary Chinese politics. His Red Trilogy about the life of Chinese leader Mao Zedong has been translated into English and French, and his Deng Xiaoping Changed China is also being translated into French and Arabic. Ye Yonglie has lectured in Los Angeles and New York.