Woman writer Tie Ning was elected new president of the
Chinese Writers Association (CWA) on Sunday, successor to the late
Ba Jin, one of the nation's literary giants of the past
century.
Tie, 49, was elected at the association's on-going seventh
congress in Beijing. She will be the third president in the 57-year
history of the association, following her predecessors Mao Dun and
Ba Jin.
The presidency has been vacant since Ba Jin passed away last
October in Shanghai at the age of 100.
First published in 1975, Tie won national acclaim in 1982 for
her prize-winning short story Ah, Xiangxue, about an
adventure of a country girl who yearns to know the outside world
and gets on a train by mistake.
Her medium-length novel The Red Shirt Without Buttons
and short story June's Big Topic won her another two
national awards in 1984. Since 1980, Tie has published a number of
collections of short stories and novels, mainly depicting the life
of Chinese women.
Before her election she was the Vice-President of the Chinese
Writers Association and president of the Hebei Provincial Writers Association.
Among the 7,690 members of the CWA, more than 900 delegates are
attending the meeting in Beijing from Nov. 10 to 14.
(Xinhua News Agency November 13, 2006)
