Success comes from varied backgrounds

Born in the 1970s, Sheng Keyi and Cui Manli (pictured) started publishing works at the onset of the new century. Though their eye-catching looks have attracted much attention, it is their strong personalities that have really impressed serious critics.

Sheng describes herself as a writer without any professional training, whose strikingly direct works have been applauded by mainstream critics.

She says her unchanged focus is on women struggling at the lower end of the social strata, such as those battling for respect in her maiden work The Northern Girls. Bai Ye, a literary critic who has followed the work of women writers over the years, hails Sheng's novel Ode to Morality (2007) as one of the best pieces so far dealing with extramarital affairs.