繁體中文
西西，原名張彥，1937年10月7日生於上海浦東，本名張燕，祖母認為「燕」字意頭不好而改用發音相近的「彥」；祖籍廣東中山，1950年隨父母移居香港，居於土瓜灣。她畢業於協恩中學（初中讀中文部，中四後轉英文部），1957年考入葛量洪教育學院，畢業後在官立小學任教約二十年，其間曾參與七十年代的教師權益運動，1979年提早退休，專事寫作。她早在初中便向報刊投稿，1953年以十四行新詩〈湖上〉發表於《人人文學》，其後在《中國學生周報》等刊物發表小說、詩與散文；1965年，短篇《瑪利亞》獲《中國學生周報》徵文比賽青年組第一名。她亦涉獵電影評論與劇本，1967年改編《小婦人》為劇本《黛綠年華》（以海蘭之名，邵氏出品、秦劍導演），1969年把麗的呼聲的舊新聞片膠卷剪成實驗短片《銀河系》，又與友人合辦《大拇指周報》及素葉出版社。她的寫作橫跨小說、新詩與散文：1975年起在《快報》連載長篇《我城》，1979年由素葉出版社結集成書，以童稚語調寫一群香港青年的衣食住行；2000年《我城》入選《亞洲週刊》「二十世紀全球華人中文小說一百強」。1982年她發表短篇《像我這樣的一個女子》，長篇《剪紙》《飛氈》與《哀悼乳房》分別寫城市變遷、家族史與自身的抗癌經歷。她行文愛用拼貼、圖文並置等手法，童趣與實驗並重，又常以童話、魔幻筆法書寫香港。晚年她寫下《我的喬治亞》，以一座喬治式模型屋為題，並把親手縫製的布偶寫進《縫熊志》等書。她一生筆耕不輟，即使患病仍持續寫作。2019年她先後獲美國紐曼華語文學獎（首位得獎的香港作家）與瑞典蟬文學獎，2022年獲香港藝術發展局「第十六屆香港藝術發展獎」終身成就獎。她的作品被譯成多種語言。2022年12月18日，她因心臟衰竭在香港離世，享年85歲。
English
Xi Xi, born Zhang Yan in Shanghai's Pudong district on 7 October 1937 to a family from Zhongshan in Guangdong, moved to Hong Kong with her parents in 1950 and settled in To Kwa Wan. Originally named Zhang Yan with a different character, she changed it at her grandmother's wish for better fortune. After secondary school at Heep Yunn School, where she moved from the Chinese to the English stream, she entered Grantham College of Education in 1957 and taught in government primary schools for about twenty years, taking part in the 1970s teachers' rights movement before retiring early in 1979 to write full time. She had already published as a schoolgirl, bringing out a sonnet, 'On the Lake', in 1953, and went on to place fiction, poetry and essays in journals such as Chinese Students' Weekly; in 1965 her short story 'Maria' took first prize in that paper's youth writing competition. She also worked in film criticism and screenwriting, adapting Little Women into the screenplay Dai Luk Nin Wa in 1967 for Shaw Brothers, cutting old newsreel footage into the experimental short The Galaxy in 1969, and helping run the journal Thumb Weekly and the Suyeh Press with friends. Her work ranged across fiction, poetry and essays. From 1975 her novel My City was serialised in the newspaper Express and appeared as a book under Suyeh Press in 1979, describing the daily life of a group of young Hongkongers in a childlike voice; in 2000 Asiaweek listed it among the 100 best Chinese-language novels of the twentieth century. Her 1982 short story 'Like a Girl Like Me' is among her best known, while the novels The Scissors, The Flying Carpet and Mourning a Breast dealt with urban change, family history and her own experience of cancer. Fond of collage and of setting image beside word, she combined playfulness with experiment and often used fairy-tale and magical-realist devices to write about Hong Kong. In later years she wrote My Georgia, built around a Georgian dolls' house, and brought hand-sewn cloth dolls into books such as The Chronicle of Bear Sewing. She wrote to the very end, continuing even through illness. She won the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature in 2019 as the first Hong Kong writer to do so, and Sweden's Cikada Prize the same year, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 16th Hong Kong Arts Development Awards in 2022. Her works have been translated into several languages. She died of heart failure in Hong Kong on 18 December 2022, aged 85.
