Posts by Lee Yew Leong

Margaret Atwood Wants You to Support Our Year-End Fundraiser!

December 18, 2015  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Only three days and exactly $1,220 left to go! Donate to our fundraiser today.

A MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

This year was a big one for us at Asymptote! We won the 2015 London Book Fair Award for International Literary Translation Initiative and became the only member of The Guardian‘s Books Network dedicated to world literature. For the second year running, we made it to Entropy’s Best Magazines of the Year list, for doing “particularly exciting & generous things.” This was also the year we were mentioned in The New York Times, interviewed by Lianhe Zaobao, and praised in Der Tagesspeigel.

With your support, we were able to continue publishing our quarterly issues, as well as a monthly podcast, a daily blog, and our brand-new fortnightly airmails (with Daniel Hahn’s very popular column, “Ask a Translator”). Apart from releasing our first-ever educator’s guide, enabling teachers everywhere to use us as a classroom resource, we also kept our promise and organized a second edition of our international translation contest (still ongoing!). Judges Michael Hofmann, Ottilie Mulzet and Margaret Jull Costa will help us award $4,500 to six emerging translators.

Now, we’re raising funds to hold our most ambitious series of anniversary events around the world yet.

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From January 2016 to April 2016, we are planning as many as 15 anniversary events around the globe, spread out over 5 continents. Confirmed participants include Ann Goldstein (translator of Ferrante), Forrest Gander (translator of Neruda), Natasha Wimmer (translator of Bolaño) and cult author Frederic Tuten in New York (Thursday, Mar 3, 2016), as well as acclaimed poet Caroline Bergvall in London (Wednesday, Mar 23, 2016). With our extensive experience (all previous 26 events documented here) we’re looking to curate a series of thoughtful readings and panel discussions in the name of promoting literary translation and world literature. All the money that we raise will go into organizing and publicizing these events, as well as marketing our fifth anniversary issue, so that even more readers can take advantage of our ever-expanding archive of world lit.

Junot Díaz, Yann Martel, Ingo Schulze and Sybille Lacan (daughter of the famous semiotician) have all contributed new and exclusive material to this milestone issue. And, for the first time in our pages, we will feature work from Uzbek, Mongolian, Guyanese and Sumerian, bringing our language tally up to 101—truly an achievement worth celebrating!

Reserve your tickets to our anniversary events with a donation now, if you’ve enjoyed what we’ve brought you this year. Support us so that we can bring our global conversation to a new city and give our fifth anniversary issue wings to reach more readers.

Furthermore the psychological boost that your donation represents (we’re all volunteers, remember) will help us carry on = PRICELESS.

Donate to Asymptote today.

An Interview with Nicky Harman from Paper Republic

December 16, 2015  |  in Interviews  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Read Paper Republic has been publishing one new Chinese fiction per week since June 2015. Our editor-in-chief talks with Nicky Harman about it.

Yesterday’s Translation Tuesday article was jointly published with Paper Republic, a collective of literary translators promoting new Chinese fiction in translation. Their new initiative, Read Paper Republic, is for readers who wonder what new Chinese fiction in English translation has to offer and would like to dip a toe in the water. Between June 18, 2015 and June 16, 2016, Read Paper Republic is publishing a complete free-to-view short story (or essay or poem) by a contemporary Chinese writer, one per week for a year, 52 in total. Readers can browse them for free, on their computer, tablet or phone.

Our editor-in-chief, Lee Yew Leong, conducted a Skype interview with Nicky Harman, one of the founders of this new initiative, to find out more.

Lee Yew Leong: How did the idea for Read Paper Republic come about?

Nicky Harman: Well, we as translators are aware that our own passion for Chinese lit and our work doesn’t always match the general reading public’s interest so we decided on a project that would (a) bring a wide selection of contemporary work to readers, and (b) have a finite term, i.e. it wouldn’t go on forever so we could feel able to put all our energies into it. And we chose short stories because although they are an under-appreciated form in the West, they are nice and short (by definition!) and complete and Chinese writers write very good ones.

LYL: Who is “we” in this case?

NH: We’re Helen Wang and myself in London, and Eric Abrahamsen and Dave Haysom in Beijing. Eric, of course, founded Paper Republic, but we’ve worked as a collective for some time, and were all keen to revitalise the site. Dave is editor of Pathlight and was a brilliant addition to our team because of his editing skills.

LYL: All of you are also united by one thing: you’ve either contributed to Asymptote or taken part in an Asymptote event!

NH: Indeed. Asymptote has been a great inspiration to translators, and very deserving of the London Book Fair Award for International Literary Translation Initiative it got this year. READ MORE…

Close Approximations—Deadline Extended!

December 5, 2015  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Six more weeks to polish that translation you've been meaning to share with the world!

Good news! Our judges have agreed to an extension of deadline for Close Approximations, our international contest for emerging translators. Yes, you now have six more weeks (until 1 Feb 2016) to polish that translation in your drawer you’ve been meaning to share with the world. This is to allow as many emerging translators as possible to vie for a total of $4,500 in prize money awarded for fiction, poetry and—a new category this year—nonfiction submissions. Winning entries will still be published in our April 2016 issue, according to the original schedule. Don’t miss this opportunity to have your work read by acclaimed translators Michael Hofmann, Ottilie Mulzet and Margaret Jull Costa!

As a result of this extension, we will be pushing back our spotlight on our first contest’s winners (and spreading it out over four weekends in January instead). Get working now on your contest application! (Guidelines can be found here.)

 

What’s New with the Asymptote Team

December 2, 2015  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

We've been keeping busy!

Hungary editor-at-large Ágnes Orzóy wrote a review on János Térey’s book Átkelés Budapesten for World Literature Today. She also wrote two blog entries for Literaturhaus Europa on migrants in Hungarian literature, emigrants and immigrants. Ágnes was recently a guest at the Balassi Institute in Bucharest where she talked about the reception of Eastern European literature in English.

Assistant editor Alexis Almeida‘s chapbook, Half-Shine, was accepted for publication at Dancing Girl Press. It will be out in the fall/winter of 2016. Also, her translation of Florencia Castellano’s Propiedades vigiladas / Monitored Properties will be out with Ugly Duckling Presse around the same time.

Brazil editor-at-large Bruna Lobato‘s essay of Juan Goytisolo’s Count Julian appeared in The Millions and her translations into Portuguese of two poems by Pulitzer winner Tracy K. Smith is forthcoming in the next issue of Jornal Rascunho, the literary supplement of Brazilian daily newspaper Gazeta do Povo.

Assistant editor Chris Schaefer had his essay “Who Killed Matoub Lounes?” published in the November 2015 issue of World Literature Today. The essay is about the controversial Kabyle singer who was assassinated in 1998.

Assistant editor Julia Leverone‘s translation of the poem “Body of Crime,” originally by the Argentine Paco Urondo, was recently nominated for The Pushcart Prize by The Brooklyn Rail, which published seven of her translations in May this year.

This week, editor-in-chief Lee Yew Leong introduced Frances Riddle’s translation of Mario Levrero’s “The Abandoned House” for Electric Literature‘s Recommended Reading.

Iran editor-at-large, Poupeh Missaghi, published a piece entitled, “Insects Are Food for Thought,” in Issue 59 of Volta.

What’s New with the Asymptote Team?

June 1, 2015  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

We've been very busy!

Aamer Hussein (contributing editor) has released a new collection of short stories, entitled 37 Bridges and Other Stories.

Aditi Machado (poetry editor) has a poem anthologized in February as well as four poems out in Web Conjunctions.

Ágnes Orzóy (Hungary editor-at-large) has written an article for Quarterly Conversation on Prae, the monumental 1934 novel by Miklós Szentkuthy, a writer previously introduced in our pages. She has also recently begun to blog for ELit Literaturhaus Europa, an observatory for European contemporary literature focusing chiefly on research, discussion and publishing results concerning literary trends across Europe, as well as inter-cultural communication of literature within Europe. Her first two posts can be read here and here.

Isle-to-Isle, chief executive assistant Berny Tan and Sher Chew’s collaborative data visualization project based on Jules Verne’s classic novel, The Mysterious Island, has come full circle. Berny also recently published a nonfiction, “Ah Ma’s Chilli,” in Junoesq Literary Journal.

Drama editor Caridad Svich‘s new book, Innovation in Five Acts: Strategies for Theatre and Performance, gathering forty-three essays from admired theater professionals discussing techniques for creating theater, is now available for pre-order at Amazon.

On April 26, Chenxin Jiang (senior editor for Chinese content) and Lee Yew Leong (editor-in-chief) took part in Singapore: Inside Out’s Beijing showcase at the contemporary art enclave, 798.

Chris Tanasescu (a.k.a. MARGENTO, Romania editor-at-large) has published an article (co-authored with Research Assistant Andres Lou and Computer Science Professor Diana Inkpen) titled “Multilabel Subject-based Classification of Poetry” in The Proceedings of the Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference; the paper is part of his ongoing project titled The Graph Poem. Alaska-based writer and academic Helena Spector also recently reviewed his book Nomadosophy in Semne Bune (previously reviewed in Asymptote here).

Diana George (proofreader) published a new story, “Wara Wara,” in the Spring 2015 issue of Conjunctions as well as a review of Antoine Volodine’s Writers in 3:AM magazine.

Contributing editor Ellen Elias-Bursac‘s translation of David Albahari’s novel, Gotz and Meyer, has been republished by Dalkey Archive.

Joshua Craze (nonfiction editor) published an essay on the conflict in South Sudan with Creative Time Reports. He also has an essay in the catalogue for Jenny Holzer’s exhibition, War Paintings, currently on display at the Museo Correr in Venice; a version of this essay was also featured in Media-N. His essay on redaction appeared recently in the collected volume Dissonant Archives: Contemporary Visual Cultures and Contested Narratives in the Middle East.

Julia Sherwood (Slovakia editor-at-large) and Peter Sherwood (past contributor) have published an extract of Czech writer Zuzana Brabcová’s The Year of Pearls, in Words Without Borders’s queer issue, out today. Their extract of Ján Rozner’s autobiographical novel Seven Days to the Funeral also appeared in BODY.Literature.

The first full-length poetry collection, Vulgar Mechanics, of assistant editor Kara Billey Thordarson (pen name K.T. Billey) is a semi-finalist for the 2015 Pamet River prize from YesYes Books. The winner will be announced on August 1.

Lee Yew Leong (editor-in-chief) has published his book-length English translation of Fu-chen Lo’s memoir, From Taiwan to the World and Back, excerpted in the January 2014 issue. He also served as guest editor for the recently launched Issue 53 of Columbia: A Journal of Art and Literature.

Interviews editor Matt Jakubowski has published an experimental work entitled “Corner of the World” in 3:AM magazine.

Marketing manager Rosie Clarke reviewed Richard Weiner’s The Game for Real (translated by Benjamin Paloff) in the May 29 issue of The Times Literary Supplement.

Poetry Foundation ran an essay by Win Bassett (legal advisor) about his summer stint at a hospital and the necessity of poetry.

Where Are We Going, Where Have We Been?

January 29, 2015  |  in Dispatches  |  by Asymptote and Lee Yew Leong

With 6 hours remaining, we're closing in on the gap with less than $1,000 to go!

In true Asymptote fashion, the script for the following video was written in Berlin and edited and polished in Taipei, Singapore, New York, London, and many other cities. The talking heads were recorded in Ithaca and then edited together in Virginia, all the while being sent all over the globe in various stages of completion so other team members could chime in with their two cents—we could think of no better way to not only explain why we we do what we do, but also to showcase how.

Presenting world literature to a wide audience all over the world is our main goal, but our main strength is our team, which works tirelessly behind the scenes all over the world to showcase that otherwise obscured poet or this overlooked writer in the best possible light and style. Please help us — all 70 of us — keep Asymptote alive beyond January 2015 and for many more years to come by donating to our Indiegogo campaign here.

—Lee Yew Leong, on behalf of the entire Asymptote team

 

Close Approximations Winners: Where Are They Now?

January 20, 2015  |  in Essays, News  |  by Asymptote and Lee Yew Leong

Our very first contest honored emerging translators. Now, a year later, our winners reflect on just what this contest means today

To witness the broad reach of Asymptote, one need look no further than Close Approximations, Asymptote’s first-ever international translation contest targeting fledgling translators and awarding $3,000 in prize money for two categories: poetry and fiction. (That’s $3,000 from your generous donations going directly into the pockets of these literary practitioners, but don’t forget that running a contest also requires heavy promotion—both paid and unpaid—, Asymptote‘s own editorial brainpower—in this case, to screen for the 20 best prose entries—, unseen but substantial administrative work—organizing contest entries and fielding queries from prospective contestants.)

Judged by no less than acclaimed translators Eliot Weinberger (in the poetry category) and Howard Goldblatt (in fiction), this contest received close to 200 submissions. Those who emerged victorious were lauded for their ability to “successfully cross the linguistic boundary,” and render translations that “zip along.” (Here are the complete judges’ citations.) Read on to see where these gifted newcomers find themselves now, a year after winning. If you would like to help us run a second contest (that will include a new nonfiction category!), give us some love—especially now that we’re entering the final stretch of our fundraising campaign, with TEN NERVE-WRACKING DAYS left!

—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief

READ MORE…

Would you like more Asymptote in 2015?

December 22, 2014  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Then support our Indiegogo Campaign!

We’ll be taking a break from now till the end of the year, but we hope you’ll check out our Indiegogo campaign in the meantime, if you haven’t already. Thanks to 67 kind souls, we’ve collected $6,000 in less than 3 weeks! But we’ll need more of you to step forward, if we are to operate beyond January 2015. Will you help us continue our mission?

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In return for your support, we’ll give away literary care packages, designer AsympTOTEs, and even tickets to upcoming anniversary events (including this one in New York, featuring three of the most beloved translators du jour: Edith Grossman, Damion Searls and Susan Bernofsky).

But, best of all, if we reach our target, we’ll be able to deliver more great international content in 2015, hold a second edition of our translation contest, organize more events, unveil an educational arm, and bring you even more installments of our recently launched podcast!

So that we’ll be able to carry on, give some love to Asymptote today.

Your great support means a lot to us. Happy holidays from us to you!
—The entire Asymptote team

p.s. Did you know? Reif Larsen and Forrest Gander are fans of Asymptote too!

p.p.s. Questions about the campaign? Send them to editors@asymptotejournal.com. We’d be more than happy to hear from you!

Farewell to Chutzpah!

March 3, 2014  |  in Interviews  |  by Lee Yew Leong

"Disappointingly, Chutzpah!’s life was cut short just as we got to the point where we had...consistent(ly)...high-quality pieces."

The radically cosmopolitan Chutzpah! announced on 20 February that it will shut down. This news was greeted with great dismay among the many followers of the beautiful print magazine. In a short period of time, Chutzpah! had established itself as the Chinese literary journal du jour. Not only did it introduce important contemporary Western voices such as Roberto Bolaño, Jesmyn Ward and Junot Diaz to the Chinese reading public via Chinese translation, it also presented a dazzling range of emerging Chinese voices, showcasing even ethnic minorities. Many of these authors have also been translated into English for the English mini-journal that is inserted within the pages of the journal. In this way, the magazine connects the latest crop of Chinese writers to English-speaking readers.

As a co-collaborator with Chutzpah! on two occasions (first, for a simultaneous publication in the October 2012 issue and, second, for a panel of literary editors in Beijing in January 2013), we were naturally saddened by the magazine’s closure and wanted to find out more. So our Editor-in-Chief Lee Yew Leong arranged for the following interview with Chutzpah!‘s English editor Austin Woerner. READ MORE…

Metamorphoses

January 23, 2014  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

A monthly update about Asymptote's contributors

Let’s take a look at what some of our past contributors have been up to, in this our first contributors’ news roundup for 2014.

READ MORE…

Asymptote’s Top 10 in 2013

December 27, 2013  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

What went viral this year?

We give you the ten most popular articles published this year at Asymptote:

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In Divisible Cities: A Q&A with Dominic Pettman

December 12, 2013  |  in Interviews  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Asymptote catches up with a past contributor whose new book was released this summer.

How is In Divisible Cities related to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities?

I would call it a primary inter-text. For twenty years or so I have been enchanted by this kind of genre, restrained, aphoristic magical metafiction, or whatever we might call it, including Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams. But Calvino’s book really inspired me in terms of its condensed, crystalline approach, concerned with what Bachelard calls “the poetics of space.” Some critics believe that all of these different cities in Calvino’s book are in fact the author’s beloved Venice, in various imaginative iterations. Rather than celebrate one single city in various disguises, however, I wanted to trace the connections or song-lines between different ones; since no city is completely foreign in the 21st century. So the writing strategy was a series of postcards from different places, which hopefully add up to a single holographic image—like a jig saw puzzle.

READ MORE…

Know Your Latest UNESCO City of Literature: Krakow

October 25, 2013  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

An honor for the Polish city

This Monday, UNESCO unveiled Krakow as its newest City of Literature, after Edinburgh, Melbourne, Iowa City, Dublin, Reykjavík, and Norwich. The announcement comes after a three-year wait; in its 2010 application (all 68 pages available for download here), Krakow is recommended as “a city of Nobel Prize winners.”
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