Linda Rui Feng teaches at the University of Toronto, where her research in Chinese cultural history often takes her to long-forgotten books from the ninth century and, more recently, the history of scent and aromatics.

Her debut novel, Swimming Back to Trout River, traces the far-flung orbits of a family across two continents, and explores the themes of music and migration in the aftermath of one of China’s most tumultuous eras in the twentieth century.

The novel was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and has also been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize.