Posts featuring Chiang Hiu-mei

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

July 19, 2024 | in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup | by Charlie Ng and Wambua Muindi

Literary updates from Kenya and Hong Kong!

This week, our editors-at-large take us around the world for the latest in festivals, book launches, and fairs! From Nairobi’s latest litfest, to a poignant memoir, to the interplay of film and literature in Hong Kong, read on to learn more!

Wambua Muindi, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from Kenya

This year’s NBO Litfest, a collaboration between Book Bunk and the international Hay Festival, was held 27–30 June across three public libraries in Nairobi (McMillan Memorial Library, Eastlands Library, and Kaloleni Library). Nothing short of a treat to literature enthusiasts, the festival was headlined by Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo, Stanley Gazemba, Lola Shoneyin, Taiye Selasi, Amitav Ghosh, and Djamila Ribeiro, among others. The festival’s first day was children-focused with incredible storytelling by Grace Wangari and Orpah Agunda, followed by a lineup of events over the weekend. As it happened against the backdrop of primarily youth-led protests against the 2024 Finance Bill, which by now have mutated to Kenya’s anti-government protests, the festival issued a statement in solidarity with the young people of Kenya.

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

June 17, 2022 | in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup | by Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Eva Wissting, and Jacqueline Leung

New books, events, and publishing houses from the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Sweden!

This week, our editors from around the world report on new acclaimed translations from the Philippines, Hong Kong writers discussing art-marking during political restrictions on their freedom of expression, and a new publishing house in Sweden focused on investigative journalism and books translated from Swedish. Read on to find out more!

Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Philippines

Literary translation in the Philippines is more alive than ever. Asymptote contributor Bernard Capinpin won the 2022 PEN America’s Heim Grant for his translation of the late Edel Garcellano’s sci-fi novel Maikling Imbestigasyon ng Isang Mahabang Pangungulila (Kalikasan Press, 1990) [A Brief Investigation to a Long Melancholia]. Also, obstetrician and travel writer Alice Sun Cua’s landmark project with Sto. Niño de Cebu Publishing House “ferried” post-Spanish Civil War novelist Carmen Laforet’s Nada into Hiligaynon language.

Aimed at enhancing the Filipino “diasporic cultural footprint around the world,” the country’s National Book Development Board offers translation grants to authors and publishers of children’s literature, classical and contemporary prose, graphic literature, as well as historico-cultural works written in Philippine languages (Ilocano, Cebuano, Waray, Hiligaynon, Meranaw, Tausug, and Kinaray-a) and foreign languages (German, Spanish, French, Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese). This year, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts also conferred the Rolando S. Tinio Translator’s Prize to SEAWrite awardee Roberto T. Añonuevo for his translation of the late National Artist for Literature Cirilo F. Bautista’s phenomenological study Words and Battlefields: A Theoria on the Poem (De La Salle University Publishing House, 1998) [Mga Salita at Larangan: Isang Pagninilay sa Tula] from English.