Michelle Yeh received her PhD in comparative literature from the University of Southern California. She has written extensively on modern poetry in the Chinese language from China and Taiwan from the early twentieth century to the present and has translated Chinese literature of all genres. She is a professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, of which she also serves as chair, at the University of California, Davis.
Photo by Noel Reynolds/Flickr“Birds” is one of the interrelated stories in Tianqiao shang de moshushi (Magician on the overpass), published in Taiwan in 2011. The enti…