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Eleanor Wachtel speaks with the remarkable Chinese-American writer, Ha Jin. He won a National Book Award for his haunting novel, Waiting.

This week on Writers & Company, host Eleanor Wachtel speaks with award-winning Chinese-American writer Yiyun Li. Her powerful and moving novel The Vagrants is set in China in the late '70s - a time of change following the end of the Cultural Revolution. Wachtel and Li journey deep into that work- and Li's successful career.

This Sunday marks the beginning of a new season and the 20th anniversary season for Writers and Company - something special. Today, Eleanor Wachtel speaks with American writer Anchee Min. The author of the searing memoir Red Azalea, and the novel Becoming Madame Mao has a new book based on the life of Pearl S Buck called Pearl of China (2009, Bloomsbury)

Growing up in Communist China, Yiyun Li devoured any books she could find. But she never imagined that, on moving to the U.S., she'd become the author of prize-winning fiction in English, including such acclaimed works as A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants and Kinder than Solitude. Her latest novel, The Book of Goose, is a beguiling tale of two peasant girls in rural post-war France. Inspired by a real-life literary hoax, it's a moving meditation on friendship, imagination and…

Minoru was born in North Vancouver, but his father took him to Japan after his mother's death in a house fire and his grandmother brought him up. Minoru talks about his experiences growing up in Japan and coming back to Canada after being part of a Japanese army.

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Eleanor speaks with Chinese American writer, Ha Jin. Winner of the National Book Award and the Pen-Faulkner Prize, Jin talks about his new novel, The Boat Rocker; writing in English; and why he's not able to return to China.

In her new memoir, Nine Continents, Chinese writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo takes an unsentimental look at her family and country's history, and how it has shaped her art.

This week, from Beijing, Chan Koonchung. His novel, The Fat Years is an astute take on the effects of Chinese politics in everyday life...what one critic describes as "the struggle over the soul of a nation."

From the International Literary Festival in Beijing, travel and voice - Eleanor Wachtel leads a discussion about the writer's role across languages and cultures or social class, through the imagination. With Lijia Zhang from China, and Luka Lesson from Australia. Also on the show, an encore presentation of Eleanor Wachtel's 2008 conversation with poet, Xi Chuan. His first collection of poetry to be published in English, Notes on the Mosquito, is coming out this month from New Directions.

Yiyun Li was 16 years old at the time of Tiananmen, but she felt it was her generation who put their lives on the line. Her new novel, Kinder Than Solitude, looks back on those horrific events.

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Illustration of man carrying heavy load on carrying pole

Illustration of man carrying heavy load on carrying pole