Place: Sydney

Winter 2014: A Rookie Among Giants

September 13, 2018  |  in 30issues30days  |  by Alexander Dickow

Living now under the shadow of Trump, the contents of the issue seem even more desperately near to us.

It takes a while for the blog to hit its stride. Editing to a quarterly schedule is different than editing to a daily one, we quickly discover. It does not help that both ‘founding’ blog editors jump ship within three months (Nick’s elegiac last post goes up on 30 October; Zack’s 31 December). Fortunately, the rest rally and get us through. (One bright spot from that time is Patty Nash’s breezy roundups—a breath of fresh air.) Five weeks after it inaugurates, Aditi Machado’s post on the blog gets picked up by Poetry’s Harriet Blog, joining mentions in BBC Culture and The Guardian. The Guardian article gives a nod to Asymptote’s first-ever London event in January 2014, also the first of many multi-continental events in honor of our 3rd anniversary. These go on to include panels and readings in New York, Zagreb, Boston, Philadelphia, Shanghai, Berlin, and Sydney over the next three months. A point of pride: determined to organize an event in Asia, I somehow manage to pull off a reading without a single team member on the ground, thanks to NYU Shanghai, contributors Eleanor Goodman and Eun Joo Kim, and a friend who happens to pass through. In New York, under real threat of snowpocalypse, Asymptote supporters Eliot Weinberger, Robyn Creswell, Idra Novey, Jeffrey Yang, and Daniella Gitlin all show up to our anniversary event at Housing Works emceed by then Assistant Managing Editor, Eric M. B. Becker, to read alongside Cory Tamler, first prize-winner of our inaugural Close Approximations translation contest (as written up in WWB Daily’s dispatch here). Here to get you excited for the Winter 2014 issue (featuring, among others, a translator’s note that I got J. M. Coetzee to write) is Alexander Dickow, runner-up to that very contest and Asymptote Communications Manager since April 2017. But, first, check out Winter 2014’s issue trailer—probably our best ever—by then Video Producer Sarah Chan.

I knew of Asymptote since its inception in 2011, but it was only in January 2014 that I was named runner-up in the first edition of Asymptote’s Close Approximations translation contest. That contest has had a lasting impact on my work: I later won a Pen/Heim Translation Fund Grant to finish translating Sylvie Kandé’s Neverending Quest for the Other Shore, which was first showcased in Asymptote and is now under consideration by a major publisher. Evoking the Winter 2014 issue of Asymptote, then, cannot not be a little about my own relationship to Asymptote, even though I was an eager young rookie among the issue’s giants— J. M. Coetzee, Jana Beňová, and Michael Hofmann, to name a few. READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

July 4, 2018  |  in News  |  by Sasha Burik

Check out the latest exploits of our stellar international team!

In the midst of sunny summertime beach reading in the north and cozy fireside reading in the south, intense world cup viewing, and political activism, the Asymptote team has been as creative as always! Below are some recent updates from the crew as well as exciting information for all you emerging translators!

Criticism Editor Ellen Jones contributed an article on Junot Díaz to Hispanic Research Journal. Her translation of Juan Pablo Roncone’s short story “Children” was published in the Bogotá39 anthology (Oneworld, June 2018). She also participated in a translation slam with Rosalind Harvey at Oxford Translation Day, where the two of them discussed their different versions of Chilean writer Nicanor Parra’s poem “Manchas en la pared.”

Blog Editor Sarah Booker contributed a translation of Cristina Rivera Garza’s “Simple Pleasure. Pure Pleasure” to The Paris Review.

Australia Editor-at-Large Tiffany Tsao’s new novel Under Your Wings was published on July 2 by Viking Australia, and has been reviewed at Readings.

Singapore Editor-at-Large Theophilus Kwek presented his paper “(Trans)National Service: Conscripting Second-Generation Migrants in Neoliberal Singapore” at the biennial conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia. In addition, his undergraduate dissertation discussing race in Singapore’s history textbooks will become a chapter in the forthcoming book Southeast Asian Education in Modern History (ed. Pia Maria Jolliffe, Thomas Richard Bruce) from Routledge.

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My 2017: Poupeh Missaghi

December 27, 2017  |  in Essays  |  by Poupeh Missaghi

We, as writers and translators, cannot afford the luxury of separating ourselves from the sociopolitical contexts of our work.

Today, we hear from Editor-at-Large for Iran, Poupeh Missaghi, who played an instrumental role in assembling our Spring 2017 issue’s Banned Countries’ Literature Showcase, even translating one of the pieces herself. Not unexpectedly, she reminds us of the need to be politically engaged, whether as readers, writers, or translators.  

I want to focus on a few timely, essential titles that remind us all that politics infiltrates every layer of our existence.

I started my year reading Finks, a book by Guernica cofounder Joel Whitney about “How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers.” The book reveals the ugly side of the literary world during the Cold War, by delving into the blurred lines between literature, journalism, and “the needs of the state; between aesthetics” and “political requirements” of the times. In the present political climate, I found it an important reminder that literature cannot truly separate itself from politics and money; and that we, as writers and translators, cannot afford the luxury of separating ourselves from the sociopolitical contexts of our work and need to strive to continuously raise awareness—both our own and others’—about such contexts.

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Dispatch from Boundless 2017: A Festival of Diverse Writers

November 16, 2017  |  in Dispatches  |  by Tiffany Tsao

"We are the Other with a capital 'O'; we are the back corner of the book shop; we are the addition, we are the afterthought."

It is difficult to convey just how excited I was when I learned that a festival devoted to Indigenous and culturally diverse Australian writers would be taking place this year. I immediately blocked off the date in my calendar, eagerly followed announcements of the festival’s lineup and official program, and counted down the days. On the long-awaited morning, I cheerfully thanked my spouse in advance for minding our toddler, clambered into my car, and sped off to the western suburbs of Sydney to have my mind blown by the incredible experience that would be Boundless 2017.

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New Asia Now: A Dispatch From Sydney

September 10, 2015  |  in Dispatches  |  by Tiffany Tsao

"Perhaps it was only natural that conversation that evening revolved around the writer's responsibility to eradicate social injustice."

On the evening of August 11th, the University of Sydney hosted a writers’ panel in celebration of the Griffith Review’s recently released issue, New Asia Now. Co-edited by Julianne Schultz and Jane Camens, and published in parallel with the Asia Literary Review, the two-volume issue is dedicated to writing about contemporary Asia by Asian and Australian authors born after 1970.

The event in Sydney was one of several, held in various locations around Australia last and this month to promote the issue. Making up one set of contributors on tour are Murong Xuecun from China, Joshua Ip from Singapore, and Maggie Tiojakin from Indonesia (who took part in Asymptote blog’s multilingual translation project “Say Ayotzinapa”). The other touring trio featured Indian writer Annie Zaidi, Chinese writer Sheng Keyi, and Filipino novelist (and Man Asian Literary Prizewinner) Miguel Syjuco.

It was the latter trio—Sheng, Zaidi, and Syjuco—who spoke at the University of Sydney that night, along with Schultz, who facilitated the panel and acted as Zaidi’s interviewer. And it was my pleasure to be included on the panel as Syjuco’s interviewer, along with Beatriz Carillo Garcia who interviewed Sheng Keyi, and Jing Han from Australia’s multicultural broadcasting service SBS who translated for Sheng (needless to say, it was very crowded up there on stage). READ MORE…

A Winter’s Night in Sydney: Poetry Plurilingual

November 10, 2014  |  in Dispatches, Translations  |  by Stephanie Guest

Reporting from the front lines of poetry, translation, and performance

I walked through Sydney’s back streets and upstairs to the crowded room where “Poetry Plurilingual” was about to begin. We sat on mismatched armchairs and wooden benches and squeezed up against each other. The night started with a series of readings of poems in foreign languages, followed by English-language translations. The focus of these readings was on the “original,” foreign, text. But the night took a sharp turn when two readers—Jack Breukelaar and Toby Fitch—boldly shifted the audience’s attention to the process and text of translation.

Jack introduced the audience to the work of Japanese writer and manga artist Kiriko Nananan, showing us a “1994 cool female authors” edition of Garo, an avant-garde manga periodical that began in the sixties, that he bought for a dollar at a discount bookshop. The book was visually striking—Jack didn’t know the work’s significance when he bought it—“but was drawn to [the] cover image by Nananan, reminiscent of Schiele or Baudelaire.” More of Nananan’s work has been translated into French than into English, and Jack had not found any previous English translation of his chosen poem:   READ MORE…

Asymptote’s 3rd Anniversary Celebrations in March and April (Plus: our New Events Page, with Multimedia!)

March 19, 2014  |  in Dispatches, Multimedia, News  |  by Asymptote

Check out highlights from our past celebrations in London and New York, and don't miss our upcoming events!

We’re thrilled to announce that Asymptote’s globetrotting third anniversary party, which kicked off in London and New York in January, will continue across five continents over the next month—watch our brand-new video trailer below for a taste, and don’t forget to RSVP at our Shanghai (March 29), Philadelphia (March 29), Berlin (April 3), and Sydney (April 11) Facebook Event pages, already live.

In case you can’t make it, don’t fret: we’ve launched a new Events page, where you can find photos, podcasts, videos, and dispatches of all the events we’ve ever organized, as well as an up-to-date pulse for all upcoming events!

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