Wang Ping is a poet, writer, photographer, performance and multimedia artist. Her publications have been translated into multiple languages and include poetry, short stories, novels, cultural studies, and children's stories. Her multimedia exhibitions address global themes of industrialization, the environment, interdependency, and the people. She is the recipient of numerous awards, a professor of English, and founder of the Kinship of Rivers project.
Wang Ping was born in Shanghai and grew up on a small island in the East China Sea. After three years farming in a mountain village during the Cultural Revolution, mostly self-taught with little prior formal education available, she attended Beijing University. In 1985, she left China to study in the U.S., earning her master's degree from Long Island University and Ph.D. from New York University.
Her award-winning books include four collections of poetry, The Magic Whip, Of Flesh & Spirit, Ten Thousand Waves, and My Name Is Immigrant; the novel Foreign Devil; two collections of fiction stories entitled American Visa and The Last Communist Virgin; a book of Chinese folk lore, The Dragon Emperor; and a book of creative nonfiction, Life of Miracles along the Yangtze and Mississippi. She is also the editor and co-translator of the anthology New Generation: Poetry from China Today, co-translator of Flames by Xue Di, and co-translator of Flash Cards: Poems by Yu Jian.
Ping is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Loft Literary Center, the McKnight Foundation and Bush Foundation. She was a recipient of the LIU Distinct Alumna Award, Immigrant of Distinction Award, Lannan Foundation Art Residency, Vermont Art Studio Residency, and many others.
Ping is also a photographer, performance and multimedia artist. Her multimedia exhibitions include "Behind the Gate: After the Flood of the Three Gorges", "All Roads to Lhasa: The Qinghai-Tibet Railroad", and "We Are Water: Kinship of Rivers." She now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is a professor of English.
To learn more about Ping, visit her website.
Wang Ping joins the Cape Symphony for Storytellers on Saturday, May 13 & Sunday, May 14, 2023. For more information and to purchase tickets for Storytellers, visit capesymphony.org, call the Box Office at 508-362-1111, email
