Li Qingzhao (李清照, Lǐ Qīngzhào, Li Ch'ing-chao) (1084 - ca. 1151) was a Chinese woman-writer and poet of the Song Dynasty.

She was born in Licheng to a family of officals and scholars; her father was a friend of Su Shi.

In 1101 she married Zhao Mingcheng, with whom she shared interests in art collection and epigraphy. The couple lost most of their possessions when they fled following the collapse of the northern Song; Zhao died in 1129. Li subsequently settled in Hangzhou, where she remarried and then divorced.

Only around a hundred of her poems are known to survive, mostly in the ci form and tracing her varying fortunes in life.

Li Qingzhao crater on Venus is named after her.

External link

• introduction to The Complete Ci-poems of Li Qingzhao: A New English Translation