Tag Archives: Chinese

“Dragonworld”, an evening of short stories at London’s Free Word Centre, Monday 12th December 2016

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If you love exploring the world, storytelling and books, join us on our next fictional journey that’s just as rewarding as the real thing. Whether you’re a London local or new to the city, come and connect with others who want to see the world with fresh eyes and open minds.

Free Word Centre, and Paper-Republic.org translators , are running a speedbookclubbing evening at Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA, Monday 12th December 2016. We’ll be presenting four short stories translated from Chinese. Sign up, read the stories in advance (or read the Cheat Sheet, if you don’t have time to read them all) and come along for some brilliant discussion.

“Dragonworld”: In these tales of death, desire, and despair, a police officer investigating a brutal murder interrogates his chief suspect, but the details of the crime itself are constantly shifting. A woman hopes a knight in shining armour will offer her an escape from the road she seems destined to pace forever. A dispute between two witnesses to a killing results in a fatal duel. A teenage gamer must find a way to deal with the concrete-hungry dragons that are somehow taking over his town.

Here’s the link: https://www.freewordcentre.com/whats-on/dragonworld-china?spektrix_bounce=true. Do come if you can. The last time we ran a speedbookclubbing event, it was a big success, a sell-out in fact.

Read Paper Republic: Season One, and Survey!

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So, it’s rather gone by in a whirlwind, but we’ve reached the end of our first year of Read Paper Republic. Starting June 18 of last year, we’ve published 53 short pieces online, one each Thursday (there’s 53 weeks in a year, right?), and today’s publication of Li Jingrui’s One Day, One of the Screws Will Come Loose marks the end of what we’ve come to think of as “Read Paper Republic, Season One”.

We’re taking a short break! Nicky Harman, Helen Wang, Eric Abrahamsen and Dave Haysom have done a remarkable amount of work over the past year, and it’s time for a breather while we think about where to go from here.

Apropos of that, we have a request to make of you! We’ve created a very short online survey that we very much hope you’ll take a moment to fill out. It’s only a page, and will be invaluable to us as we look back over the past year of publications, and think about the future. Please take five minutes and help us fill it out!

So what will be next? We’re not sure yet. Over the next six months, we’re likely to make some more additions to the RPR lineup, probably based around events and author visits in various parts of the world. “Season One” was done with no funding whatsoever (thanks to all our editors, translators and authors!), and we’re very aware that we could make a hypothetical “Season Two” a lot better with a bit of support.

Got any good ideas for doing that? Please let us know in the survey!

Read Paper Republic: New short stories in Translation

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We at Read Paper Republic are a collective of literary translators, promoting new Chinese fiction in translation. Between 18th June 2015 and 16th June 2016, we are publishing a complete, free-to-view short story (or essay or poem), every Thursday (that’s #TranslationThurs) for a whole year. As part of Women In Translation Month, we have focused on four hugely talented and very different women writers (all the translators are women too!) for our short stories in August, 2015.

  • First up, Regurgitated by Dorothy (Hiu Hung) Tse, translated by Karen Curtis. A disturbingly [sur]real tale about a city that devours its children.
  • Then we have Missing by Li Jingrui, translated by Helen Wang. What would you do if your husband went missing for a few months? And then turned up as randomly as he disappeared?
  • Third comes A Woman, at Forty by Zhang Ling, translated by Emily Jones, who writes in her introduction: ‘Is there a word that means a sort of gentle, everyday disappointment? The kind that isn’t a crushing bolt from the blue but something that wears you down gradually over time?’
  • Then, Sissy Zhong by Yan Ge, translated by Nicky Harman: ‘Yan Ge’s stories of small-town life are full of acute comments on human relationships. She has a wonderful ear for the things that remain unsaid, as well as the way people actually talk to each other.’
  • And for the final story in our clutch of five, on Friday 28 August, there’s a story by author and poet Wang Xiaoni, translated by Eleanor Goodman. Yes, it will be one day late, but it’s worth waiting for!

Challenging, weird, funny, characterful, dark, beautiful, poignant, tragic, our stories are all of these and more. Don’t delay: dip a toe in the water, and start reading our short stories now! http://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/ or follow us on Facebook (Paper Republic) or Twitter @PaperRepublic.

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