Set in eighth-century Tang Dynasty China, The Walking Boy follows the life of Baoshi, a young disciple to an aging hermit monk, who has a secret only his master knows. When he is just 16, Baoshi is sent on a quest to Changan, the ancient Western capital and the epicentre of the Tang Dynasty, ruled by the bitter and aging Female Emperor. Threatened by temptation and exposure to the outside world, Baoshi soon finds himself embroiled in a ghost story set amongst the sumptuous and elaborate rituals of the palace, a decadent world of corruption and intrigue, passion and desire.A vivid and compelling novel inspired by true historical events, The Walking Boy is a contemporary re-visioning of eighth-century China, written with exquisite lyricism and boundless imagination.

Lydia Kwa was born in Singapore but moved to Toronto to begin studies in Psychology at the University of Toronto in 1980. After finishing her graduate studies in Clinical Psychology at Queen's University in Kingston, she moved to Calgary, Alberta; then to Vancouver, BC, and has lived and worked here on the traditional and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples since 1992.

Kwa has published two books of poetry (The Colours of Heroines, 1992; sinuous, 2013) and four novels (This Place Called Absence, 2000; The Walking Boy, 2005 and 2019; Pulse, 2010 and 2014; Oracle Bone, 2017). Her next novel, A Dream Wants Waking, will be published by Buckrider Books, an imprint of Wolsak & Wynn, in Fall 2023. A third book of poetry from time to new will be published by Gordon Hill Press in Fall 2024.

She won the Earle Birney Poetry Prize in 2018; and her novels have been nominated for several awards, including the Lambda Literary Award for Fiction.

She has also exhibited her artwork at Centre A (2014) and Massy Art Gallery (2018) and has self-published two poetry-visual art chapbooks. An essay “The Wheel of Life: From Paradigm to Presence” appears in the art catalogue In the Present Moment: Buddhism, Contemporary Art, and Social Practice by Haema Sivanesan (Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 2022).

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