Language: Chinese

Spring 2024: Highlights from the Team

May 6, 2024  |  in News  |  by Alex Tan, Heather Green, Janet Phillips, MARGENTO, Matilde Ribeiro, Matthew Redman, Michelle Chan Schmidt, and Vuslat D. Katsanis

More entrypoints into the glorious Spring Asymptote, courtesy of our generous team!

Aigerim Tazhi’s “Following the Breath of the Earth” is a refreshing reminder of another way of life through Kazakh spirituality—one that treasures the interconnectedness of nature and all of the species in it, where nature stands for truth in an undivided and nonhierarchical ecosystem. The ancestral belief in the gods of the sky (Tengri) and earth (Umai) echos the current calls for decolonial approaches to climate justice. And yet, the critique of the tourists who contaminate glacier lakes in Tibet, or the rise of yurts for camping trips North America, or the odd questions asked of the poet in Rotterdam, gently caution against the performative gestures that appropriate Indigenous beliefs. The story’s motif of nomadic travel and breath fits well in this conception of an interconnected world.

This theme of nature and the interconnected ecosystem for alternative worldbuilding is carried out in several other articles, including Jang Okgwan’s poems (tr. Susan K), with motifs of water and moonlight; and Leeladhar Jagoori’s poems (tr. Matt Reeck), of mountains and terrain.

I also appreciated the attention on language, the limits of the written word, and the rebelliousness of vernacular expression in this issue, especially in Sebastián Sánchez’s interview with Chilean author Diamela Eltit (tr. Fionn Petch) and in the poetry of German-Turkish Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç (tr. Özgecan Kesici). Each provides glimpses into the capacity of language play and hybrid rule-bending for community-building, political resistance, and memorialization.

 —Vuslat D. Katsanis, Assistant Editor (Poetry)

Chen Yuhong’s poem “Buddhist Pine” opened my eyes to different ways of being still/degrees of stillness. The way the poem successively transposes metaphors of animal, seasonal, granitic, and athletic stillness on the motionless pine made me understand that things can be still in different ways. That the pine might have a willed, disciplined stillness, or that it might be coiled, or frozen, or at rest, or somehow all at once.

 —Matthew Redman, Digital Editor READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

April 12, 2024  |  in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup  |  by Andriana Hamas, Charlie Ng, and Sofija Popovska

The latest literary news from Macedonia, Hong Kong, and Bulgaria!

This week, our editors-at-large report on prizes in Macedonia, literary festivals in Hong Kong, and unexpected literary losses in Bulgaria. Read on to find out more!

Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from North Macedonia

The Slavko Janevski Foundation, a Macedonian foundation dedicated to the advancement and promotion of cultural values, recently selected Edinstven Matičen Broj (which translates to Unique Master Citizen Number) by Lidija Dimkovska as the novel of the year for 2023.

Lidija Dimkovska was born in1971 in Skopje. She is a poet, novelist, and translator, whose literary interests and expertise extend beyond national borders and include early Macedonian poetry, contemporary Slovenian poetry, and contemporary minority and migrant writing in Slovenia. Currently based in Slovenia, Dimkovska works as a freelance translator of Romanian and Slovenian literature. Her work has been translated into 15 languages, including English, German, French, Romanian, Slovenian, Croatian, Polish, Serbian, and Albanian. English translations of her work include the poetry collection Do Not Awaken Them with Hammers—translated from the Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Peggy Reid, and published in 2006 by Ugly Duckling Presse—and What Is It Like?—selected poetry translated by Ljubica Arsovska, Patricia Marsh and Peggy Reid and published in 2021 by Wrecking Ball Press—which made World Literature Today’s 75 Notable Translations of 2022 list. Her poetry has been described as “honest and uncompromising” by the writer Goce Smilevski; Edinstven Matičen Broj is no different. Named after an identification number assigned to every citizen of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, it offers an unflinching study of identity loss and dehumanization.

“The question that I ask in the novel and that each of us should ask is whether we really exist, even when we have a unique master citizen number, and that question everyone should answer separately, individually and, perhaps, only in silence of their heart,” said Dimkovska at a recent press conference. The jury at Slavko Janevski highlighted her “acute sensitivity to zeitgeist”, which has allowed Dimkovska to dramatize the abstraction of “rootlessness and displacement” in “concrete life scenarios”. Her prose devastates with its candor—she writes in a clipped and probing narrating voice, reminding readers of “[m]oments when you can no longer breathe in the cramped apartment, when you are so lonely and alienated from the people who should be close to you, that you simply have to go somewhere so as not to lose yourself.” READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

April 5, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Bella Creel, Rubén López, and Xiao Yue Shan

The latest of literary news from Guatemala, China, and Japan!

In this week of literary updates, we discuss the blend of technology and literature around the globe—from a virtual imagining of the Popul Vuh in Guatemala, to the use of ChatGPT by the winner of a prestigious literary award in Japan, to an interactive exhibition of Wisława Szymborska’s poetry in Shanghai.

Xiao Yue Shan, Blog Editor, reporting for China

Despite having famously said, in an interview with Edward Hirsch, that “it isn’t possible to save mankind”, Wisława Szymborska displayed no shortage of compassion towards humanity and its messes, surging always towards a more enriched penetration into people, the layered fabric of their histories, and the immense variegations of their natures. In China, funnily enough, most people likely became aware of the Polish poet through a celebrated graphic novel by the Taiwanese artist Jimmy Liao;《往左走，往右走》(published in English as A Chance of Sunshine) is a story about destiny and its aloneness—depicting two individuals who walk separate paths but are unified by the same experiences. In it, Liao borrows the following lines from Szymborska’s “Love at First Sight”:

They’re both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

That same tension between unity and undeniable difference is consistently offered through Szymborska’s corpus, and is central to a new exhibit in Shanghai centred around her works, held at Qiantan L+Plaza from April 1 to May 15. Composed of interactive installations, performances, and graphic poetic representations,  “我偏爱“ (I prefer) is a valiant effort to iterate the complexity of the poet’s exquisite awareness, and aspires towards both a sense of communion and a defense of individuality. True to its vision of dialogic action, as well as honouring literature’s confessional and communicative capacities, there are surveys to fill out, votes to cast, letters to open, and a telephone to pick up. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “today I only took one ativan” by Maniniwei

March 26, 2024  |  in Translations  |  by Emily Lu

your hand was bigger. sturdier. the nights were sturdier too.

This Translation Tuesday, senses heightened by a sleeping pill, Taiwanese writer Maniniwei exhibits a wonderful sensitivity to touch. Everything in this dreamy poem feels as if ‘felt’. The softness of her cat, the points of its claws and teeth, the texture of the night, the contents of her dreams; they are as if sensations in the fingertips have been translated directly into a lilting prose-poetry, which have been rendered with equal care and skill into the English by Emily Lu.

I needed more distance from you. cicadas screamed as if giants were about to descend. my morning. was your tiny playground. today I took an ativan. weighed you on the scale. patted my own belly. and patted the cat one hundred times. your hand was bigger. sturdier. the nights were sturdier too. don’t ask the sand what it saw. which horses. which humans. I liked time on you. the flying humans from the picture stopped to rest in your mind’s boat. the fresh flowers and IV pole on your body. your nighttime bite and cough. your shoulder, eaten. I wrote this song for you. today I ran. today I only took one ativan. patted your fur. celebrated your fur. comforted your fur. your sweet fur. wet from the rain. very quickly I got hungry. didn’t do anything and hungry. Two scratch marks left by the cat. no blood. nothing. I saw it. you looked like a god of spring.

Translated from the Chinese by Emily Lu

Maniniwei is a Malay-Taiwanese writer and illustrator. She was writer-in-residence at Hong Kong Baptist University in 2021. Her works have been recognized by OPENBOOK, the Bologna Ragazzi Award, the Taoyuan Chung Chao-Cheng Award for Literature, and the National Culture and Arts Foundation. Restarting her creative practice after age 30, she is the author of more than ten books. She lives in Taipei with one child and two cats. This is the first time her work has appeared in English.

Emily Lu was born in Nanjing. She completed her MD at Queen’s University in 2017. She is the author of the chapbooks there is no wifi in the afterlife (San Press 2022) and Night Leaves Nothing New (Baseline Press 2019), as well as works appearing in Waxwing, Augur, Honey Literary, Arc Poetry Magazine, and filling Station. She lives in Toronto. This is her debut translation.

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

March 8, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Areeb Ahmad, Carol Khoury, and Xiao Yue Shan

The latest from China, India, and Palestine.

New arrivals of a Sinophone Proust, a celebration of Lucknow and Urdu culture, and a new solidarity campaign to share Palestinian literature. Our editors are bringing you the latest literary news from on the ground, and there’s plenty to discover.

Xiao Yue Shan, Blog Editor, reporting for China 

“Life is too short, and Proust is too long.” This snarky remark by (maybe) Anatole France has long hovered over the labours of translators worldwide, as much a challenge as it is an implicit acquiescence to just how difficult and time-consuming the text is. As multiple as his English appearances, Proust in Chinese also comes to us through a plethora of voices. There exists at present only one complete collection of À la recherche du temps perdu《追忆似水年华》in the Chinese language, published in 1989 through a concerted effort by Yilin Publishing House and a total of fifteen translators (who called themselves the “Suicidal Translators Squad”). This is the only version that has accompanied readers for over thirty years—with plenty of updates, corrections, and criticisms along the way—though the possibility of alternative editions always beckoned temptingly from the beyond; critics are always quick to note (not entirely without resentment) that in neighbouring Japan and South Korea, five or six full translations of this masterwork has been made available to the public.

Short as it may be, life presents plenty of distractions and exits for the overwhelmed translator. Luo Xinzhang exhausted himself after 50,000 characters. Xu Jun made it until halfway through the fourth volume before giving up at an impressive 230,000 characters, having expended eight hours a day for over two years (and also suffering from depression). Xu Hejin passed away. Zhou Kexi plead a lack of physical stamina, saying that he was drained by the text’s beauty. Many of them, along with readers, expressed tremendous regret that there would not be a single unified representation of Proust in the Chinese language, fluid in style, levelling up to the original, rooted in a single, persistent mind.

Then in 2020, something changed. The Dafang offshoot of CITIC Publishing Group suddenly announced the “Proust Project”, involving a plan to newly translate À la recherche du temps perdu with a single translator at the helm, based on Gallimard’s revised and annotated 1987 edition. The individual selected for the job was Kong Qian, a professor of French at Nanjing Normal University, who had been named Best New Translator at the 11th Fu Lei Translation Awards for her work on Kaouther Adimi’s Our Wealth. Kong has since been given ten years to complete the task—one that is, for any literary translator, a dream. It is the opportunity to occupy a permanent estate in world literature, a claim to a text that has embedded itself in both the literati and the public consciousness of China, even amidst the hurried days. (The book is so famous in China that directors will use it as a prop, in order to directly communicate a character’s highbrow tastes or worldly intellect.) READ MORE…

Spontaneity Through Ambiguity: An Interview with Chia-Lun Chang

March 4, 2024  |  in Interviews  |  by Anne Lai

[H]ere is where I can explore my limited English as a vehicle, within this ambiguity.

I met Chia-Lun Chang when we were both enrolled in the Poets House fellowship program in 2016, when I had only been writing for a few years and was hesitant to call myself a poet. We bonded over how new we were to writing poems. In this following conversation, we retraced her unconventional introduction to writing poetry and how English as a second language offered her a newfound identity to be playful and purely honest. Her book Prescribee (Nightboat Books, 2022) wields humor like a dagger, rife with cutting repartee that reveals how cruel, yet liberating life is for her in America. Her poems from the book have appeared in Granta, The Brooklyn Rail, and BOMB online.

Chia-Lun Chang (CC): In Taiwan, the genres are not as distinct as in America, but I noticed that many high-profile writers in Taiwan primarily write non-fiction prose, expressing their opinions. Readers think of it as culturally significant; it provides a getaway into the lives of another world, a world full of writers or cultured individuals. During our conversation, I’ve also realized that many novelists are telling one story. They have numerous novels, but it’s one same story from a core idea because it originates from their body. 

Anne Lai (AL): Do you feel like you’re also in pursuit of one idea when you’re writing?

CC: Because of my experiences, I tend to question my identity. But, aren’t we all, in some ways, asking ourselves, “Who am I?” In that very question, I’m afraid of finding the unknown. There are moments when I write in English, where I create a new persona that reflects this nation and the body that I inhabit within it. That is the direction I’m heading and it’s tied to my identity, this very new role that I’m cultivating.

AL: This reminds me of your experience in trying to get your green card, and eventually getting it.

CC: Yeah, both of those experiences—applying for a green card and learning the language that I speak most of the time. The green card process was brutal so I was constantly facing a blackhole answer: what’s necessary for me to stay? I’m terrified of my desire. I don’t believe I have the opportunity to create art in Taiwan, I’m not talented enough or I don’t have space to do what I’m doing here, and many may disagree. But I’m grateful that I can be playful and try different things in this new language and space.

AL: I’ve never asked you this, but have you written poetry in Mandarin? How did you start writing? 

CC: Never. Growing up, I was always interested in writing, but I saw myself more as a reader. There were times when I would write essays for school; the requirements of exams in Taiwan were like the SAT tests in the States, but they asked for more melancholic and metaphorical compositions. Those were my experiences in building my first language. I remember the question on my college exam was, “Who is your idol? Who do you look up to?” I actually wrote about the poet Su Shi. In my society, I felt that people had a moral obligation in writing; they had to be heroic—even in love, in pain, or struggling. Deep down, I have a cynical personality and worry about not being accepted by society. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

February 9, 2024  |  in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, René Esaú Sánchez, and Sofija Popovska

The latest literary news from Hong Kong, Mexico, and North Macedonia!

This week, our Editors-at-Large explore blockchain publishing, poets’ novels, and literary surrealism. Read on to find out more!

Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong

In December, Hong Kong independent bookstore Mount Zero Books announced that it will be closing in March 2024 due to anonymous complaints on the bookstore’s “illegal occupation of government land”, and the resulting warning from the Lands Department regarding the tiled platform outside of the bookstore. Mount Zero Books’ experience is not an isolated issue; it is part of the narrowing of Hong Kong’s cultural space under the current political climate, in which independent publishers and bookstores are facing increasing control and censorship. In 2022, for instance, local independent publisher Hillway Press was not allowed to participate in the annual Book Fair organised by Hong Kong Trade Development Council. The publishing house then planned to host a “Hongkongers’ Book Fair” featuring 14 independent local publishers and bookstores in the shopping mall Mall Plus in Causeway Bay. Unfortunately, the book fair was forced to cancel as they were accused of violating the terms of venue use. In December 2023, one of the founders of Hillway Press emigrated and the company decided to close down. What is more, two of Hong Kong’s remaining independent bookstores, Have A Nice Stay and Hunter Bookstore, have said that they face frequent complaints and regular monitoring by government departments.

In light of increasing challenges — both economic and political — faced by the local publishing industry, Hong Kong writers are beginning to explore new means of publishing their works and reaching out to readers. Hong Kong writer Dung Kai-cheung has been counting down to the 15 February publication of his new work, Autofiction, on his own writing platform, Dungfookei. Autofiction will be published in the form of an NFT. The new autobiographical nonfiction is part of the writer’s exploration of the potential of Web3’s blockchain technology for decentralizing publishing and granting more autonomy in user control and ownership of data. In 2023, Dung joined Likecoin — an application-specific blockchain for decentralized publishing developed by Hong Kong entrepreneur Ko Chung-kin — to republish his famous novel Tiangong Kaiwu·Lifelike, which became the first Chinese novel to be published as an NFT. While Tiangong Kaiwu·Lifelike is available for purchase on Likecoin’s website, Dung also developed his own platforms Dungfookei and DKC in Translation to digitalise his works and interact with readers in new ways. Although the project is still experimental, by turning to the web for more freedom and opportunities, Dung’s foray into Web3 and NFT publishing represents an innovative frontier in the evolving landscape of literature and author-reader interaction. READ MORE…

Our Milestone 50th Issue Has Landed!

January 18, 2024  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Featuring Emily Wilson, Ilya Kaminsky, Michael Cronin, Nam Le, and Samer Abu Hawwash alongside new work from 35 countries!

Living today is a feat of coexistence. In Me | You | Us, our Winter 2024 edition—Asymptote’s landmark fiftieth!—people seek ways to equably share a world of jostling values, languages, and stories. Embracing the rare spotlight in mainstream English media almost never afforded translators, Emily Wilson discusses her groundbreaking translation of Homer and its place in the constellation of existing English Odyssies. Public intellectual Michael Cronin makes the case for translation’s centrality in the construction of new narratives necessary for the continued survival of our species amid other species. Headlining our Special Feature themed on coexistence, Nam Le’s frenzied poems are just as preoccupied with Carl Linnaeus’s taxonomy in the original Latin as they are driven to distraction by the insufficiency of that same scanty alphabet against the tonal splendor of Vietnamese. In Ilya Kaminsky’s Brave New World Literature contribution, truckloads of Dante’s Inferno being delivered to a besieged Kharkiv speak to a different, tenuous, and moving, coexistence. As support for Ukraine wavers in the US, we at Asymptote have kept up our coverage of the region also through Elina Sventsytska’s devastating poetry, a review of Oksana Lutsyshyna’s latest award-winning novel in English translation, and a dispatch about the chilling aftermath of a Russian dissident’s self-immolation. Alongside these, I invite you to discover the Mexican pioneer of magical realism Elena Garro, Palestinian poet Samer Abu Hawwash, Cuban artist Gertrudis Rivalta Oliva, and Romanian playwright Edith Negulici amid never-before-published work from a whopping thirty-five countries. All of it is illustrated by the Netherlands-based guest artist Ehud Neuhaus.

Winter-2024-v9
If, as Taiwanese author Lin Yaode put it, “literature’s history is really a history of readers of literature,” the history of Asymptote might also be in part a tale of its readers. But why should it stop there? To all collaborators and supporters, past and present, I say gratefully: this one is for you! As hinted at by last year’s closures of The White Review and Freeman’s—both similarly prestigious journals with a focus on world literature—existence (by which I mean mere survival) has not been easy. We made it to our 1st, 2nd, 3rd . . . and to our 50th edition because of you.

If you are an avid reader of the magazine and haven’t yet signed up, we hope you’ll consider becoming an official sustaining or masthead member today for as little as USD5 a month in addition to subscribing to our socials (Facebook, X, Instagram, Threads) and our monthly Book Club. If you represent an institution advocating for a country’s literature, check out this (slightly outdated) slideshow and get in touch to sponsor a country-themed Special Feature, as FarLit has recently done. (The deadline to submit to our paid Faroese Special Feature is February 15th, 2024; the guidelines and a new call for reviewers to contribute to our monthly What’s New in Translation column can be found here). If you work for a translation program, prize, or residency, consider advertising through our myriad platforms, including our newly launched “Upcoming Opportunities in Translation” column. And, finally, if you’d like to join us behind the scenes in advocating for a more inclusive world literature, we just announced our very first recruitment drive of the year (deadline to apply: February 1st, 2024). Thank you for your readership and your support. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Upcoming Opportunities in Translation

December 18, 2023  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

For our final post of the year, we decided to compile a list of opportunities for all you translators out there to apply to. Onward and upward!

Opportunities abound for the emerging translator!  Just in time for the year-end break—this will be our final post of the year—we sifted through the latest ones and compiled the best and timeliest for our new one-stop hub, “Upcoming Opportunities in Translation.” See you on the other side of the New Year!

AWARDS

SARAH MAGUIRE PRIZE

The 2024 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation is now open for submissions. This international prize is awarded every two years to a translated book of poetry by a “poet living beyond Europe”. The winners will receive £3000, to be divided between the poet and their translator, and will be included in a Poetry Book Society promotion alongside up to seven other shortlisted titles. Past winners include Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish and Chinese poet Yang Lian.

Founded in 2020, the Prize commemorates the Poetry Translation Center’s founder, renowned poet Sarah Maguire, and seeks to celebrate the art of poetry in translation, which the PTC calls “the lifeblood of poetry”. Applications close on Monday, January 1st, 2024.

Apply here.

WORLD LITERATURE  TODAY – STUDENT TRANSLATION PRIZE

World Literature Today offers an annual competition for students enrolled in translation studies programs worldwide, and applications are open! Consistent with WLT’s commitment to serving international and university communities alike, the Student Translation Prize seeks to recognize the work of emerging translators from anywhere in the world.

Entries should include a piece of translated prose (up to 1,000 words) or three pieces of poetry, along with a cover letter. $200 will be awarded to one prose translation and one poetry translation. Both will also be published online in the summer.

Applications are due January 11th, 2024.

Apply here.

MO HABIB TRANSLATION PRIZE IN PERSIAN LITERATURE

The Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at UW is thrilled to announce that the Mo Habib Translation Prize in Persian Literature is open for submissions for its second cycle. In partnership with the Mo Habib Memorial Foundation and Deep Vellum Publishing, this prize aims to commemorate the life of Mohammed Habib through the celebration of Persian literary works.

This cycle will focus on Persian poetry from the 10th century CE to the present day. Bi- or multilingual projects are more than welcome, as are collections of poems from more than one author. Applicants should submit a cover letter, a CV, and a sample of the proposed translation by March 1st, 2024. The winning translation will be awarded $10,000 and will be published by Deep Vellum.

Apply here. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Mingwei Song

November 21, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Eleanor Goodman

but the heart cannot pretend, it still hurts, it’s still wide awake

This Translation Tuesday, we flit between sleepless dreams in Mingwei Song’s immersive poetry. Hypnotized by incantations, we are firmly inside while the outside is ever-evolving; night falls and seasons pass. Translated from the Chinese by Eleanor Goodman, Angel and Bearing in Mind are an entrancing study of repetition and change. 

Angel

Waking from a dream, I dimly recall you, like a broken-winged angel
carefully hiding yourself in the crowd, like a spot of cardamom red in a black and white movie and in the blink of an eye the entire sky dances with snow, the dream smashes into symbols
like melting ice, flowing into the morning’s sorrow
waking each day again and again
as star after star goes extinct
I can only get up, walk into the origami of ordinary life
turn carefully so as not to bump into the walls covered in incantations
in one vast white day
my body is shadowless
with nowhere to hide the worries of dreams
the daylight holds no warmth
yet is everywhere
the endless day is as hard to traverse as an enormous empire
there is blank white paper everywhere before my eyes
yet I cannot write down your name

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

November 3, 2023  |  in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, Wambua Muindi, and Zohra Salih

The latest literary news from Hong Kong, India, and Kenya!

This week, our Editors-at-Large report on documentaries about poetry, award-winning short stories, and exciting translation fellowships. From novels shortlisted for big prizes to upcoming movie screenings, read on to find out more!

Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong

Taiwan’s 60th annual Golden Horse Awards will be held on November 25 and Hong Kong film director Ann Hui’s most recent documentary Elegies is nominated for the Best Documentary Feature. Elegies was already selected as the opening film for the Hong Kong International Film Festival earlier this year, which was a rare occasion as poetry—the subject of the documentary—used to be a niche literary interest in the city. The first part of Elegies presents a sketching of contemporary Hong Kong poetry through interviews of Hong Kong poets and archival materials of Xi Xi and Leung Ping-kwan. The second and third part of the documentary are dedicated to two Hong Kong poets, Huang Canran and Liu Wai-tong, respectively, who both have deep cultural roots with Hong Kong but choose to live elsewhere. Hui studied literature at university, and poetry had long been a subject matter that the director wished to explore through the medium of the moving picture. The film is her way of paying homage to local poetry and the city, as well as an elegy for a bygone era.

To celebrate the nomination and achievement of Elegies, M+ Museum has organised a few screening sessions of the documentary in November. The November 18 screening includes a post-screening dialogue with the director and the featured poets, moderated by M+ film curator Li Cheuk-to. Ann Hui will discuss her ideas about poetry and the implications of poetry for her film productions. The three artists will engage in conversations on the essence of poetry, as well as their own stories of poetry writing. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

September 22, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, Heloisa Selles, and MARGENTO

The latest literary news from Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, and Spain!

This week, our team members bring us news from around the world, from worldbuilding at a conference in Canada to reflections on the ties between Ireland and Spain. Read on for more on a bilingual publication out of Hong Kong, and Irish press publishing literature from the Romanian diaspora, and more!

Heloisa Selles, Executive Assistant, reporting from Toronto, Canada

 It was the last Saturday of August when a crowd of speculative fiction lovers gathered to attend the AugurCon, in Toronto. It was the first in-person event promoted by Augur Magazine, a biannual publication that promotes Canadian and Indigenous voices writing fantasy, science fiction, and other uncommon forms of genre fiction. As a reader and an appreciator of the strange and unusual, I knew I had to be there.

As the afternoon went by—a mild, muggy breeze bringing spurts of rain and, consequently, people in and out of the venue—I noticed my perception of neighboring urban outlines changing, shaped by the imaginative perspectives on worldbuilding the conference highlighted. Author Larissa Lai, one of the participants of “The Speculative City” panel, spoke about utopia as more than the capacity to imagine something better (or as a concept on the flip side of pessimism), but as a continuous investigation that honors the function of the dream. What is better in the dream, and for whom? “The dream as we dream it may not come to pass,” she said, “but our dreams impinge on flows.” This lyrical statement about the ethics of creation reminded me of the proverb: “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.” In SFF, creating new visions of what the world could become is also a way to keep the door open for those who will come after you, writers and readers alike.

Besides the panels, Augur also organized workshop AMAs with leading professionals in the publishing industry. I missed some discussions due to the overlapping agenda—and an enthusiastic, boisterous crowd—but I liked what I saw. I found the deliberate choice of keeping statistics out of discussion rather curious, especially in light of how BookTok helped boost sales in 2022 and fantasy genres went up 26.5% in sales in the first half of 2023, according to Publisher Weekly. Another overlooked but crucial aspect of publishing speculative fiction is the importance of funding for writers. This topic was partially addressed by a workshop about grants, which detailed the eligibility criteria for the Toronto Arts Council (TAC) Writers Program. In the federal sphere, the 2021-26 Strategic Plan created by the Canada Council for the Arts delineates how it is investing $1.6B in grants to authors to support artistic and literary creation.

The day was long and busy. As I packed up my modest book haul at the end of the one-day event, marinating in thoughts about fictional worlds, I noticed an old yearning being rekindled, the promise of being wrapped up in a fantastic story growing inside me. Maybe that is the primordial role of speculative fiction: to help us cope with real life by allowing us to step out of it, even if just for a little bit. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

September 15, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Jiaoyang Li, José García Escobar, and Marina García Pardavila

The latest from Central America, Spain, and China!

This week, our Editors-at-Large bring us around the world for the latest of literary news! From a brilliant cast of Central American authors at Madrid’s upcoming literary festival, to an inside glimpse into Spain’s translation residencies, to a thought-provoking workshop at China’s aBC Art Book Fair, read on to learn more!

José García Escobar, Editor-at-Large, reporting for Central America

Central America’s brightest stars are about to come together yet again!

On September 18, the latest edition of the region’s most celebrated literary festival, Centro América Cuenta, will kick off in Madrid, Spain!

This time, Centro América Cuenta will gather regional talents such as Arnoldo Gálvez Suárez (Guatemala), Cindy Regidor (Nicaragua), Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador), Mónica Albizúrez (Guatemala), Rodrigo Rey Rosa (Guatemala), and Sergio Ramírez (Nicaragua), next to Latin American and Spanish writers such as Mónica Ojeda (Ecuador) and Patricio Pron (Argentina). One high point of the festival will occur on September 18, when former president of Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solís, and former Guatemalan jurist living in exile, Thelma Aldana, will gather to discuss the current state of democracy in Central America.

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What’s New with the Crew? (Aug 2023)

August 17, 2023  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Find out what our staff members have been up to when we’re not editing your favorite literary journal!

Editor-at-Large for Palestine Carol Khoury will be the guest editor of a special issue of the Jerusalem Quarterly, titled “Write-Minded: Jerusalem in Literature”; check out her call for submissions here or email her for further details.

Newsletter Editor Cody Siler published an essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books about  the impact of the American suspense writer Patricia Highsmith’s diaries on her critical reputation.

Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large for Romania & Moldova, chaired in June the 5th edition of #GraphPoem at Digital Humanities Summer Institute, a “data commoning” hyper-platform performance involving hundreds of participants and watched by thousands of viewers online.

Nonfiction Editor Ian Ross Singleton translated four poems by Marina Eskina for Barzakh.

M.L. Martin has a new translation of the pre-10 c. Anglo-Saxon queer, feminist poet in the latest issue of Cordite.

Assistant Editor Megan Sungyoon‘s translation of The Cheapest France in Town by Korean poet Seo Jung Hak is scheduled to be published by World Poetry Books in October 2023.

Blog Editor Meghan Racklin’s essay on sore throats as illness and as metaphor was published in Full Stop and her review of The Light Room by Kate Zambreno was featured in The Brooklyn Rail.

Assistant Editor (Fiction) Michelle Chan Schmidt published a review of Owlish by Dorothy Tse, translated from the Chinese by Natascha Bruce, in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.

Editor-at-Large for North Macedonia Sofija Popovska‘s Macedonian translation of the novella Im Kopf von Bruno Schulz by Maxim Biller was published in July by Makedonika Litera Press; additionally, “Thaumatropes”, a poetry collection she co-authored with Jonah Howell also appeared in July, published by Newcomer Press.

Copy Editor Urooj recently had two poems published in Gulmohur Quarterly‘s Issue 10, released in June 2023. They were also invited to share their poems at the Bangalore Poetry Festival, in Bangalore, India as one of four young, emerging poets in a panel called “Poems in Progress.”

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Interested in joining us behind the scenes? We’re still finalizing our mid-year recruitment drive—hurry and apply if you’d like to help power the world’s literature!