Wenxuan Cao

Cao Wenxuan (born January 1954 in Jiangsu Province, China) is a Chinese novelist and one of the country’s most acclaimed children’s authors, known internationally for works such as Bronze and Sunflower, The Straw House, Dragonfly Eyes, Feather, and Lemon Butterfly. He grew up in rural China and later studied Chinese language and literature at Peking University, where he is now a professor of Chinese literature and children’s literature and serves as Vice President of the Beijing Writers’ Association.

Cao’s books have been widely translated, including into English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, and Korean, and he was the first Chinese writer to receive the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing, one of the world’s most prestigious honors for children’s literature. In picture books such as Feather and Lemon Butterfly, illustrated by Brazilian artist Roger Mello, Cao pairs poetic, philosophical storytelling with visual art to explore themes of identity, quest, and the beauty of the natural world.