Yang Shuang-zi

Yang Shuang-zi is the pen name of Yang Jo-tzu, born on July 10, 1984, in a military dependents' village in Wuri, Taichung. The name means "twins." She is the elder of twin sisters, and the pen name began as the pair's joint byline.

As a kid she wanted to draw manga. At 14 she switched from drawing to prose, and at 19 she published her first romance novel, Aiqing Dahunzhan, in 2003. She spent eight years in night school, earned a degree in Chinese Language and Literature at National Chung Hsing University, then a master's in Taiwanese literature at the same school, with a thesis on Taiwan's popular romance fiction.

In 2014 the sisters started writing historical fiction together. Jo-hui, the younger twin, handled research and translation from Japanese; Jo-tzu handled plot and characters. Jo-hui died in 2015, and Jo-tzu chose to keep their shared pen name. Since then she has become one of the leading voices of literary yuri in Taiwan, writing about affection between women during the Japanese colonial era. Seasons of Bloom (花開時節), from 2017, is set in Taiwan in 1926.

The book that changed everything was Taiwan Travelogue, released in Taiwan in 2020. The premise: in 1938, a Japanese writer tours the island and forms a close bond with her Taiwanese interpreter. Food, language and colonial power blend together on a trip full of generous meals. The novel won the Golden Tripod, Taiwan's publishing award, and came out in Japan in 2023, where it received a best translation award.

The English edition, translated by Lin King, was published by Graywolf Press in 2024 and won the National Book Award for Translated Literature that year. In 2026, now with a UK edition, it won the International Booker Prize, shared by author and translator. As of May 2026, rights had been sold in 22 languages.