Qiu Miaojin is known for her unapologetically lesbian fiction and tragically short writing career. Her novels were among the first in Taiwan to deal outrightly with lesbian identity and the social dysphoria that can accompany same-sex desire in these societies. Published in 1994 and winning the China Times Award for Literature in 1995, The Crocodile Diaries is a portrait of Taiwanese lesbianism amid the tumultuous decade of the 1990s, during which time Taiwan experienced a powerful feminist movement and opening up of society due to the lifting of marital law in 1987.