Mike O'Connor, an Olympic Peninsula native of Washington State, is a poet, writer, and translator of Chinese literature. His early years were spent in subsistence farming and forest work. Later, he lived 14 years in Taiwan, the Republic of China, working as a journalist and studying Chinese culture and literature. His most recent of eight books is When the Tiger Weeps, Pleasure Boat Studio: a Literary Press; and Where the World Does Not Follow: Buddhist China in Picture and Poem, with photographer Steven R. Johnson, Wisdom Publications.
A former student of Elizabeth Bishop at the University of Washington, O’Connor has also received an MFA from Naropa University and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2006, he was made an honorary fellow of Hong Kong Baptist University. He currently resides with his wife Liu Ling-hui, a dance teacher and choreographer, in Port Townsend, Washington.
Photo by Julia McHugh