Qiu Miaojin
Qiu Miaojin (1969–1995)—one of Taiwan’s most innovative literary modernists, and the country’s most renowned lesbian writer—was born in Chuanghua County in western Taiwan. She graduated with a degree in psychology from National Taiwan University and pursued graduate studies in clinical psychology at the University of Paris VIII. Her first published story, “Prisoner,” received the
Central Daily News Short Story Prize, and her novella
Lonely Crowds won the United Literature Association Award. While in Paris, she directed a thirty-minute film called
Ghost Carnival, and not long after this, at the age of twenty-six, she committed suicide. The posthumous publications of her novels
Last Words from Montmartre and
Notes of a Crocodile made her into one of the most revered countercultural icons in Chinese letters. After her death in 1995, she was given the
China Times Honorary Prize for Literature. In 2007, a two-volume edition of her
Diaries was published, and in 2017 she became the subject of a feature-length documentary by Evans Chan titled
Death in Montmartre.