Honey Barbara Watson (born 1994) is an English author and translator of literature from Mandarin to English. Her debut science fiction novel Lessons in Birdwatching was published in 2023.
After reading the assigned reading, Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman, Watson insisted on changing majors to Chinese literature, and began the process of self-teaching herself to translate literature.[5]
Chinese novelist Su Tong gave a month-long series of lectures at NYU, which Watson assisted by providing English language translations of his discussed stories throughout. This would lead to Watson translating a short story collection of Tong's called Midnight Stories: A short story collection from the mind behind Raise the Red Lantern.[5]
Her debut novel Lessons in Birdwatching was published by Angry Robot in 2023 in the US and UK to positive reviews.[7][8] She would write from dive bars in Las Vegas.[9]
Watson's first novel-length translation was Fan Wu'sSouls Left Behind: A WW1 Chinese Labour Corps Novel.[5]
She contributed to a collection of short stories by Yao Emei, where each story was translated by a different translator, called The Unfilial: Four Tragic Tales from Modern China.[5][10]
Bibliography
Novels
Lessons in Birdwatching - (Angry Robot, 2023).
Speaker's Memory - (Talos Press, forthcoming)
Translations
Souls Left Behind: A WW1 Chinese Labour Corps Novel, by Fan Wu (Sinoist Books, 2024) -- trans. by Honey Watson
The Unfilial: Four Tragic Tales from Modern China, by Yao Emei (Sinoist Books, 2024) -- trans. by Will Spence, Olivia Milburn, Honey Watson and Martin Wards
Midnight Stories: A short story collection from the mind behind Raise the Red Lantern, by Su Tong (Sinoist Books, 2024) -- trans. by Honey Watson