Song Lin, born in Xiamen, China, has published five collections of poetry (two of which were translated into French and published in France), two books of prose, and has co-edited a contemporary poetry anthology. He began writing poetry in the 1980s as a "campus poet," and was imprisoned for almost a year for participating in student protests. He married a French woman, moved to Paris in 1991, and subsequently lived in Singapore and Argentina, before returning to China in 2003. He has received Rotterdam and Romanian International Poetry Fellowships and the Shanghai Literature Prize. He is a poetry editor for the literary journal Jintian.