Huang Yuning（黄昱宁）
Director of the literary editing department and Senior Editor at Shanghai Translation Publishing House (STPH)

Storydrive interview: Interview with Huang Yuning

Huang Yuning, born 1975 in Shanghai, is director of the literary editing department and senior editor at Shanghai Translation Publishing House (STPH). She is also an industry mentor for master’s degree students majoring in publishing at the Chinese language faculty of Fudan University.

As administrator of the foreign literary editing department, Yuning has always been committed to increasing the influence of STPH in foreign literature. Since she took office in 2006, the product lines of the literary editing department have become more organized and focused, with three major sectors - classics, modern and contemporary, and genre fiction - advancing in tandem. In recent years, the literary department has published excellent books that have won major book awards, such as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Poetry Edition), which won first prize at the Shanghai Book Awards. Both the Collected Poems of W H Auden and On Grief and Reason had the honor of being listed among the “10 Best Books of the Year” by the authoritative Shenzhen Reading Month. Meanwhile, Norwegian Wood, Charlotte’s Web, Tuesdays with Morrie, as well as Men Without Women, Killing Commendatore, and The Collected Works of Kazuo Ishiguro were also best sellers. STPH has swum against the tide and shone in the foreign literary market, maintaining top three market share nationwide. At the end of 2017, it set up a team and worked together with the “iGet （得到）” APP, becoming the latter’s major content provider in foreign literature.

In addition to editing, Yuning is also involved in literary translation and creative writing; many of her works are influential and critically acclaimed in the publishing and literary circles. This has given her more say in her publishing work, and has united the translation team as well as the forces from all walks of life. Yuning’s translation works include Sweet Tooth, Solar, On Chesil Beach, The Crack-Up, Pavilion of Women, The Mousetrap, and The Turn of the Screw. She has also authored several collections of essays and commentaries including The Gods Might Go Crazy If Women Start To Think, A Solitary Castle, The Dog That Dreamed About Schubert, Negative Reading, Positive Writing, Metamorphosis, and When Fiction Becomes Truth. Her novellas Call Forwarding and Polarity have been published in People’s Literature, and her short stories such as Happiness At My Fingertips and Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles have been published in Shanghai Literature. Eight And A Half, a collection of novellas and short stories, will debut in May 2018. She won the Shanghai Publishing Newcomer Award in 2008, was named Most Creative Editor at the 2010 Shanghai Book Fair, and received the “New Translator Award” from the Shanghai Translators Association in 2011. In 2013, she was ranked first by the highest number of votes in the literature category at the inaugural “Best Editor in China” award conferred by “Bookdao.com”. In 2016, she received the “Spring Reading Ceremony Gold Translator of the Year Award” from the Zhejiang media.