water chestnuts and the opening wound

Dong LI is a multilingual author who translates from Chinese, English, French, and German. He is the English translator of the PEN/Heim-winning The Gleaner Song (Giramondo & Deep Vellum, 2021) by the Chinese poet Song Lin and The Wild Great Wall (Deep Vellum, 2018) by the Chinese poet Zhu Zhu. His full-length PEN/Heim-winning translation of the Chinese poet YE Hui is forthcoming from Deep Vellum. LI’s debut collection of poetry, The Orange Tree (University of Chicago Press, 2023), was the inaugural winner of the Phoenix Emerging Poet Book Prize.