teaching, Bei Dao has organized two poetry initiatives in Hong Kong: in 2009, he launched International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong, which, since 2017, has been under the auspices of the Hong Kong Poetry Festival Foundation; he also launched a visiting writer series in cooperation with the Lee Hysan Foundation, which brings two foreign authors to Hong Kong each year and publishes their work in Chinese through Oxford University Press. Personal life Bei Dao has one daughter from his first marriage to the artist Shao Fei. He lives with his current wife and their son in Hong Kong. In addition to writing and teaching, he pursues photography, and has exhibited his photographs at the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Museum in Beijing. In his essay collections, Bei Dao has written about the many friendships he has made during his travels, including with notable literary figures such as Allen Ginsberg, Susan Sontag, Breyten Breytenbach, Tomas Tranströmer, Gary Snyder, and others. Honors Bei Dao has won numerous awards for his writing. Honors bestowed for his body of work include: PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award (United States, 1990) Tucholsky Prize (Sweden, 1990) American Academy of Arts and Letters, Honorary Member (1996) Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (United States, 1998) Argana International Poetry Award (Morocco, 2002) Jeanette Schocken Literary Prize (Germany, 2005) Honorary Doctorate, Brown University (2011) Cikada Prize (Sweden, 2014) Golden Wreath Award of the Struga Poetry Evenings (North Macedonia, 2015) Barbara Fields-Siotis Award (Greece, 2020) Since his exile from China, Bei Dao has been mentioned in the press as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, with various sources claiming that he has been nominated for the prize numerous times. On at least one occasion, rumors drew reporters to his home in anticipation that he would win. In 1996, he was a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and in 2008 he was named a Puterbaugh Fellow at the University of Oklahoma. Bei Dao has been, and continues to be, a featured speaker at institutions and cultural events around the world, including the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam, the Prague Writers' Festival, the PEN World Voices Festival, and many others. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages, and his poems have been widely anthologized. Work Due largely to his personal story, Bei Dao's writing has frequently been viewed through the lens of politics, a practice the poet