About the Author

With her husband, Dr Verner Bickley, MBE, Dr Gillian Bickley is co-founder of Proverse Hong Kong as a publishing entity and also of the international Proverse Prize for unpublished writing. Born and educated in the UK, Gillian Bickley (then Miss Gillian Workman) arrived in Hong Kong in 1970 to take up a position in the English Department of the University of Hong Kong. She has held full-time University positions also at the University of Lagos, Nigeria and the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She retired as Associate Professor after twenty-two years at Hong Kong Baptist University (formerly Baptist College). Her books, articles and essays include biography, poetry, and edited work in the area of nineteenth-century studies, including nineteenth-century Hong Kong studies. She has five published poetry collections to her name, two of which have also been published in Chinese. In the summer of 2014, she was an invited guest at the 18th International Festival, "Curtea de Arge? Poetry Nights", held just outside Bucharest, the Romanian capital, and was accorded the Grand East-West Prize for Arts by the Festival Board. Some of her poems have been anthologized in Hong Kong, the UK, and the Philippines and some have been translated into Catalan, French, German, Romanian, and Turkish as well as other languages. An experienced project-manager, text editor, and production manager, she has worked with 66 now-published English-language books by Hong Kong and international writers from January 2008 to December 2014 (inclusive), five Chinese-language books and one English-Chinese bilingual book. As co-ordinator of literary activities for a non-profit registered educational charity, she has led reading appreciation sessions which are open to the community and for two years worked with the Gifted Education Section of the Education Bureau to encourage creative writing among students. She has recently completed teaching creative reading and writing courses at the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education (HKAGE) and at HKU SPACE.