赵希然

赵希然（英语：Xiran Jay Zhao）是加拿大一名华裔作家和社交媒体创作者。她凭借出道作品《钢铁寡妇》拿下“《纽约时报》畅销书榜”第一名并因此获得2021年度“不列颠科幻协会最佳青少年作品奖”，紧接着她在2024年拿下“惊奇奖最佳新作家奖”。

早年境况

赵希然在五年级时随家人从中国的一个小镇移民至加拿大的不列颠哥伦比亚省，而她的父亲拥有回族血统。赵希然自小便爱在脑海里构思故事，但直至她15岁在一次漫展受到鼓励后才开始动笔写作。

赵希然大学时代在西蒙·弗雷泽大学的健康科学学院学习生物化学，她后来于2020年获得该校的理学学士学位。毕业后，她曾短暂供职于一家公司，但随后便决定从事其他行业。

Xiran Jay Zhao (Chinese: 赵希然; pinyin: Zhào Xīrán) is a Canadian author and social media creator. Their debut novel, Iron Widow, became a No. 1 New York Times Best Seller and won the 2021 BSFA Award for Best Book for Younger Readers.

Zhao's subsequent novels, Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor (2022) and Iron Widow's sequel Heavenly Tyrant (2024), were also New York Times Best Sellers. They won the 2024 Astounding Award for Best New Writer and Heavenly Tyrant won the 2025 Aurora Award for Best YA Novel.

Early life and education

Xiran Jay Zhao immigrated to British Columbia from a small town in China in grade five. Their father is of Hui heritage. Zhao would imagine stories growing up, but did not put any on paper until being encouraged to at an anime convention when they were 15.

They studied biochemistry at the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 2020. They worked at a co-op before deciding on a different career.

Career

In March 2020, Zhao signed a two-book deal with Penguin Teen Canada for a young adult (YA) mecha reimagining of the rise of the Chinese Empress Wu. Rock the Boat, the children's imprint of Oneworld Publications, acquired the UK rights in May 2021. Zhao described the series as a "monstrous amalgamation of my love for anime and my love for Chinese harem dramas". The first installment in the series, Iron Widow, was published in September 2021 and reached No. 1 in the Young Adult Hardcover category of the New York Times Best Seller list.

In September 2020, Zhao went viral, first on a Twitter thread followed by their first YouTube video, for their criticisms of Disney's live-action Mulan remake and its cultural inaccuracies. They credit their presence on the Internet as a self-described "Chinese history memer" for the success of Iron Widow, which was initially expected to only appeal to a niche audience. Jessica Singer, for CBC News in August 2021, highlighted the impact of BookTok on sales of young adult fiction. Singer wrote that "books like Iron Widow by Canadian author Xiran Jay Zhao are already gaining popularity online, even before the book's release date in late September". Kara Savoy, Penguin Random House Canada's integrated marketing director, told Singer that "when Xiran did an unboxing video of their advanced copies a few weeks ago [on TikTok], the pre-sale numbers in the U.S. went up 600 per cent that week". Their YouTube channel showcases Chinese history, pop culture and cosplay, and they have been a featured cosplayer at multiple editions of DashCon 2. Zhao spoke publicly about the impact of the payment structure for book publishing on their career, noting that it led them to "prioritise projects that brought in reliable money", such as YouTube videos.

At the beginning of 2021, Zhao landed their second book deal for Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor, a middle grade contemporary fantasy with Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. It was released on 10 May 2022. The novel debuted at No. 4 on the New York Times Best Seller list in the Children's Middle Grade Hardcover category; it remained on the list for two weeks. Alec Scott, for The Globe and Mail, compared Zachary Ying to Zhao's Iron Widow and commented that "the two books speak to Zhao's obsessions – both with anime, the visual storytelling popularized in Japan that's gone global, and with Chinese history and mythology. [...] In both novels, the mythic past gets translated into the future. [...] For all their differences of mood, the novels rescue what is valuable to Zhao in Chinese history and myth, and project it forward – creating artistic acts of cultural reappropriation". For their part, Zhao recalls the way historical idiom and allegory are woven into contemporary Chinese language and culture -- alongside history education in schools -- as the reason they are able to draw on so much historical and mythological content for their books.