Liu Zhenyun has been dubbed the “top cultural figure of the year” over twenty times by various media outlets in China, including Sina.com, China Newsweek, Esquire (China), and Beijing Youth Weekly. His works have won over seventy national awards for both short and long fiction, including from such top literary journals as People’s Literature and Dangdai. In 2011, he was awarded the prestigious Mao Dun Literature Prize for his novel Someone to Talk To (一句顶一万句).
Many of his works have been adapted for the screen and have premiered at film festivals the world over, including the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the Berlin International Film Festival, in addition to a number of festivals in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Films based on his works have garnered over fifty awards. (For more information, see “Films”)
- — April 2018: awarded the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, French Ministry of Culture; named goodwill ambassador to the 2018 Croisements Festival
- — January 2018: The Era of Watermelon Eaters (吃瓜时代的儿女们) named one of the top ten books of 2017, Yazhou Zhoukan (Hong Kong)
- — April 2017: Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, award of recognition
- — April 5, 2017: appointed “Reading Promotion Ambassador” for the Beijing International Book Fair (five-year term)
- — February 2017: Casablanca International Book Fair, award of recognition
- — June 2016: Someone to Talk To named one of the best 60 books of the first half of 2016, Swedish Ministry of Culture (300 copies distributed to public libraries throughout Sweden)
- — January 2016: Cairo International Book Fair, award of recognition
- — June 2015: I Did Not Kill My Husband (我不是潘金莲) named one of the best 60 books of the first half of 2015, Swedish Ministry of Culture (300 copies distributed to public libraries throughout the country)
- — April 2013: appointed “National Spokesperson for Reading” by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television
- — January 2013: I Did Not Kill My Husband tops the list of Yazhou Zhoukan’s top ten books of 2012
- — August, 2011: Someone to Talk To wins the 8th Mao Dun Literature Prize
- — January 2008: The Cook, The Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon (我叫刘跃进) named one of the top ten books of 2007, Yazhou Zhoukan
- — 2007: Remembering 1942 (温故一九四二) selected as the Japan Library Association’s best book to recommend to public libraries