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Hello again! You must have been champing at the bit to receive this next issue of our newsletter. Well you need wait no longer. It’s been a busy time for the PR management team, what with the delights that were the Aberdeen Festival of Chinese Translation and Bristol Translates as well as our working toward some big announcements we can make soon. Watch this space. Then there’s the small matters of the welcome distraction, the Olympics, followed eagerly by Nicky and Emily, upcoming camping trips for Jack and Eric, and big work projects and exams for Yvette and Lirong.

Anyway, first for a little housekeeping. Remember back to May 2020? (I don’t know about you, but I can’t tell if it feels like yesterday or ten years ago with the past year and a bit the world has had.) So whether you do remember or not, a reminder: Paper Republic collaborated with Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing to run Give-it-a-go, bringing together 124 translators plus ourselves to have a go at translating Deng Anqing’s “Forty Days: Growing Closer to My Parents during Quarantine” (read the joint translation here). Since then, this piece and others from the Epidemic Series have been translated into Spanish, hereherehere and here, plus, I believe, into Slovenian, somewhere. The new good news is that, more recently, Deng’s account of lockdown at home is now available in Danish, in DanmarkKina magazine #115. It feels good for PR to have played a role in giving these stories a broader, more international readership.

Second on the agenda is a redaction. The previous newsletter claimed that author Yan Ge was performing the superhuman feat of abandoning her native Chinese language to write fiction in English. We’ve since been gently corrected: she’s performed the ultra-human feat of DOING BOTH: while her debut English-language collection and novel are in the pipeline, she’s working on her next Chinese novel. It’s the Dublin water.

And lastly, word has come over the transom of a new short-story collection by sci-fi giant Wang Jinkang (王晋康), entitled Wild Future (野未来). The Chinese-language publisher has been in touch about an English translation of the 11 stories in the collection — stay tuned.

We have a packed edition this time around, it being the accumulation of over a month of news, stories, poems and reviews. The conclusion from it all is: watch for your TBR list and bookshelves in the next year filling up with anything and everything Jeremy Tiang translates and recommends…

News:
1. The Locus Award for Best Collection goes to translator & writer
2. Pathlight Magazine reveal new logo
3. Bei Dao wins 2nd Yakamochi Medal
4. Alexis Siemon is the new editor for the Cornell East Asia Series, looking to acquire accessible scholarly translations of East Asian fiction and poetry
5. Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang, tr. Ken Liu, “The Ancestral Temple in a Box” by Chen Qiufan, tr. Emily Jin & “Roesin” by Wu Guan, tr. Judith Huang on Shortlist of Science Fiction and Fantasy Rosetta Awards 2021
6. Cocoon by Zhang Yueran, tr. Jeremy Tiang & Flowers of Lhasa by Tsering Yangkyi, tr. Christopher Peacock win PEN Translates awards
7. Congratulations to all the winners of the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators 2021!
8. Jeremy Tiang named as Princeton University’s translators in residence for spring 2022
9. Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang, tr. Ken Liu, on shortlist for THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD
10. AI unicorn SenseTime appoints Three-Body Problem author Liu Cixin as director of ‘immersive’ sci-fi research project
11. Jeremy Tiang on Booker International Prize judging panel
12. Nicky Harman on Bristol Translates Chinese workshop
13. “All the Violence It May Carry on its Back: A Conversation about Diversity and Literary Translation” by Gitanjali Patel & Nariman Youssef — including Chinese translators Jenna Tang, Jeremy Tiang, Yilin Wang & Jen Wei Ting
14. Dr. Tammy Lai-Ming Ho of Cha Journal is University of St. Andrew’s Visiting Scholar, collaborating on CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA 1976-2025 research project
15. Shi Chen opens Isolated Island Bookstore in Shanghai
16. Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing launch Writing Chinese: A Journal of Contemporary Sinophone Literature
17. 4th Lenghu Science Fiction Award winners accounced

Events
1. Literature in Exile: Writers and Absence at Southbank Centre, London, Sep 25, w/ Xiaoluo Guo
2. Catapult online translation workshop series – book now! — w/ Chinese translators Jenna Tang & Christina Ng
3. Balestier Book Club: More Than One Child with Shen Yang, Nicky Harman, and Xinran

Extracts, stories and poems:
1. Read the essay “Promiscuous Literacy: Taipei Punk and the Queer Future of The Membranes,” by Ari Larissa Heinrich (translator of Chi Ta-wei)
2. “An Occasion” by Yam Gong, James Shea, Dorothy Tse
3. “Yena” by Che Yeun — “Close, the way any two girls around here grow close, because there isn’t much else to do, and anyone who makes you forget how little there is to do, anyone who makes your heart race, is someone you suddenly cannot live without.”
4. The Poetry of Meng Haoran tr. Paul W. Kroll available now for free download
5. “Festival” by Chung Kwok-keung, tr. May Huang
6. “A Room By the Sea” and “Sissy-Gun” by Yi-Hang Ma, tr. Siyü Chen — part of AAWW’s special issue “Queer Time: A Special Notebook of Taiwanese Tongzhi Literature”, ed. Ta-wei Chi & Ariel Chu
7. Three Poems by Jade Huang, tr. Riley Tsang, Louie Zhang, Sean Y. Li — part of AAWW’s special issue “Queer Time: A Special Notebook of Taiwanese Tongzhi Literature”, ed. Ta-wei Chi & Ariel Chu
8. “Seasons Of Bloom” by Yang Shuang-zi, tr. Lin King — part of AAWW’s special issue “Queer Time: A Special Notebook of Taiwanese Tongzhi Literature”, ed. Ta-wei Chi & Ariel Chu
9. “Queering History, Archiving the Future: In Search of Taiwanese Lesbian History, by Eno Pei-Jean Chen, tr. Jeremy Tiang — part of AAWW’s special issue “Queer Time: A Special Notebook of Taiwanese Tongzhi Literature”, ed. Ta-wei Chi & Ariel Chu
10. “Huang Hsiao-Ning, The Dashing Female Elvis” by Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association, tr. Jeremy Tiang — part of AAWW’s special issue “Queer Time: A Special Notebook of Taiwanese Tongzhi Literature”, ed. Ta-wei Chi & Ariel Chu
11. Poetry Lab Shanghai Summer ’21 Issue
12. Vessel by Cai Chongda, tr. Dylan Levi-King, extract on LitHub
13. “Something to Do with Poetry” by Can Xue, tr. Chen Zeping and Karen Gernant
14. “Journey to the West” by Li Cunyan, tr. Sarah Waldram
15. New “Made in China Journal” out, available for free, “Then and Now: Looking Back and Imagining the Future of Chinese Civil Society”

Reviews and releases:
1. This summer, CAT’s staff are reading Peach Blossom Paradise by Ge Fei, tr. Canaan Morse
2. Buzzfeed recommends, this summer, you read Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge, tr. Jeremy Tiang
3. Ghosts City Sea by Wang Yin tr. Andrea Lingenfelter now available to order
4. The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei, tr. Ari Larissa Heinrich, in Asian Review of Books
5. Peach Blossom Paradise by Ge Fei, tr. Canaan Morse, on Book Post
6. Verse of Voice Poetry magazine is available online now
7. Hard Like Water by Yan Lianke, tr. Carlos Roja, on The Guardian
8. Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw by Hua Li available to order now
9. The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei, tr. Ari Larissa Heinrich, on ABC News
10. Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge, tr. Jeremy Tiang, in World Lit Today
11. Ocean Vuong recommends Last Words from Montmartre, by Qiu Miaojin, tr. Ari Larissa Heinrich
12. Jen Doll on Xiaolu Guo’s Search for a Perfect Home
13. Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror, ed. Ian Rowen — includes seven stories, “Long, Long Ago There was an Urashima Taro” by Chu Tien-hsin (tr. Sylvia Li-chun Lin and Howard Goldblatt), “The Taste of Apples” by Huang Chun-ming (tr. Howard Goldblatt), “Rice Diary” by Sung Tse-lai (tr. Ian Rowen), “Dixson’s Idioms” by Huang Chong-kai (tr. Brian Skerratt), “Disappearing Manhood” by Wu Chin-fa (tr. Chris Wen-chao Li), “Beef Noodles” by Li Ang (tr. Sylvia Li-chun Lin), “My Second Brother, the Deserter” by Wu He (tr. Terence Russell)
14. Chen Qiufan’s new book out Sep 14, AI 2041, w/Kai-Fu Lee
15. Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge, tr. Jeremy Tiang, in New York Times
16. Vessel by Cai Chongda, tr. Dylan Levi-King out now
17. Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge, tr. Jeremy Tiang, in the Arts Fuse
18. Hunter School by Sakinu Ahronglong, tr. Darryl Sterk on Cha Journal
19. Vincent Ni recommends More Than One Child by Shen Yang, tr. Nicky Harman — available from Balestier Press in September
20. Rouge Street by Shuang Xuetao, tr. Jeremy Tiang, available for pre-order now
21. Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge, tr. Jeremy Tiang, on Tor
22. Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds – poetry by Li Bai and Du Fu, tr. Brian Holton into Scots – out in August

Media:
1. Translator Yilin Wang addresses various forms of bias in translation from Asian Languages in “Barriers, Privileges, and Invisible Labor: A Sino Diaspora Translator’s Perspective”
2. Chinese Literature Podcast & The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast on list of Top 60 Literature Podcasts
3. “How China Made Tintin Less Racist” on Sixth Tone
4. China History Podcast Ep. 277: The Writer, Lin Yutang feat. The Chinese Literature Podcast
5. Tianqi Wang’s drawing of their definition of translation, 2021, for “Translation as Creative a practice” module at Cardiff Uni
6. “The History and Politics of Wuxia” by Jeannette Ng on Tor
7. Louise Law Lok-Man and Jennifer Feeley on Hong Kong Literature, “Power Resides within It”
8. “他/TA/X也: What Pronouns Do Chinese Queer People Use?” on Radii
9. Film Review: Madalena (馬達·蓮娜) on No Man is an Island
10. “The Bold and Unruly Legacy of Chen Wen-Chen” on New Bloom
11. “Cheesy Porridge—Individual Taste & Cultural Style in Translation” by Dave Haysom
12. “The Power House” -a futuristic piece where dancers generate the energy that power the world – from short-film trilogy on Taiwan’s creative + cultural identities
13. “Reading Chinese authors, and trying to learn Mandarin”, an interview w/Tess Gerritsen on Boston Globe
14. Ten Years (2015) is a collection of 5 stories set in a “fictional” Hong Kong in 2025 — Topics include self-immolation protest, cultural & Cantonese annihilation, & children as chilling Youth Guards
15. The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast ep.57: Home Sickness by Chih-ying Lay, tr. Darryl Sterk — the book is available here
16. “The Stars in Wong Kar Wai’s Universe” on the Criterion Collection
17. “Xi Xi: The Playful Seriousness of a Quintessential Hong Kong Writer” on Zolima City
18. “Unfolding Beijing” by Lavinia Liang on LARB
19. “Why are Chinese Fans Calling Male Celebs ‘Wife’?” on World of Chinese
20. PODCAST: How to become a literary translator, a deep dive with Sarah Ardizzone, Jamie Lee Searle & Rosie Eyre

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