Woman writer Tie Ning was elected new president of the Chinese Writers Association (CWA) on Sunday, successor to the late Ba Jin, one of the nation's literary giants of the past century.

Tie, 49, was elected at the association's on-going seventh congress in Beijing. She will be the third president in the 57-year history of the association, following her predecessors Mao Dun and Ba Jin.

The presidency has been vacant since Ba Jin passed away last October in Shanghai at the age of 100.

First published in 1975, Tie won national acclaim in 1982 for her prize-winning short story Ah, Xiangxue, about an adventure of a country girl who yearns to know the outside world and gets on a train by mistake.

Her medium-length novel The Red Shirt Without Buttons and short story June's Big Topic won her another two national awards in 1984. Since 1980, Tie has published a number of collections of short stories and novels, mainly depicting the life of Chinese women.

Before her election she was the Vice-President of the Chinese Writers Association and president of the Hebei Provincial Writers Association.

Among the 7,690 members of the CWA, more than 900 delegates are attending the meeting in Beijing from Nov. 10 to 14.

(Xinhua News Agency November 13, 2006)