蘇友貞 goes by the English name of Leslie Su Cheng. She was born in the port city of Keelung, TW, and graduated from the National Taiwan University (Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures). After winning a fellowship from the Li Foundation, she came to the United States and earned a master’s degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Afterward, she obtained another master’s degree in management information systems from the University of Missouri - St. Louis, and worked as a computer programmer for a few years. We were married in 1982, and when our second son was born, she became a stay-at-home mom.

Leslie has broad interests and has always been an avid reader. Her published writings have mostly been in Chinese. She has produced short stories, poems, and essays under Su Yuchen 蘇友貞 (sometimes also under the pseudonym Yingzhong 映鐘) in Wanxiang Magazine (萬象雜誌), Reading Magazine (讀書雜誌), Sanlian Life Weekly (三聯生活周刊) in mainland China, Contemporary Magazine (當代雜誌) in Taiwan, and St. Louis News in the US. The first ones came out in the 1990s. It was the early days of the Internet. She was delighted to find that her writing was favorably received by readers in China. This led to formal publications of her anthologies in book form: in 2004 知更鳥的葬禮 (Mockingbird’s Funeral), in 2006 禁錮在德黑蘭的羅麗塔 (Imprisoning Lolita in Tehran), in 2008 當王子愛上女巫 (When the Prince Fell for the Witch). She also published her Chinese translations of the biography and writings of Hannah Arendt, the important 20th-century philosopher. The latest book 未适的新土 (The Unaccustomed New Soil) in 2014 is a collection of Leslie’s opinion columns originally published in 世界日報 The World Journal, the largest Chinese newspaper in North America. Her short stories in English have been published in American literary journals such as Other Voices and River Styx.  

Below are the links to her Chinese books for easy access.

To be added in the future for each book:

Tables of Contents and sample essays in PDF/WORD files.