Fiona Sze-Lorrain

Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Fiona Sze-Lorrain in France, 2012
Born	1980 (age 36–37) Singapore
Occupation	Poet, translator, editor, harpist
Language	English, French, Chinese
Nationality	French
Education	Columbia University; New York University; Paris-Sorbonne University
Spouse	Philippe Lorrain

Fiona Sze-Lorrain (born 1980) is a French musician, poet, literary translator, and editor.

Born in Singapore, she spent her formative years in New York City and France. She grew up trilingual and began studying classical piano and guzheng at a young age. A graduate of Columbia University, she obtained her master's degree from New York University before earning a PhD in French from Paris-Sorbonne University.

Sze-Lorrain writes mainly in English, and translates from Chinese and French. An editor at Vif Éditions, she has written for venues related to fashion journalism, music and art criticism, and dramaturgy.

In 2007, she worked with Gao Xingjian on a book of photography, essays, and poetry based on his film, Silhouette/Shadow.

Through Mark Strand, whom she would later translate into French, she found her poetic vocation. A debut poetry collection, Water the Moon, appeared in 2010, followed by My Funeral Gondola in 2013.Prairie Schooner describes her work as an "arc" that "navigates the sense of otherness" with poems that "burst at the seams with the customs, gastronomy, ancestry, literature, and art of the two cultures." Her third collection, The Ruined Elegance, is published by Princeton University Press in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets in 2016 and is named one of Library Journal's Best Books in Poetry for 2015. It is also a finalist for the 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Currently one of the recognized translators of contemporary Chinese poetry, she is shortlisted for the 2016 Best Translated Book Award and longlisted for the 2014 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She is a co-founder of Cerise Press (2009-13) and a corresponding editor of Mānoa (2012-14).