This week, allow our editors-at-large to take you around the world to find out about the most exciting literary news. From Hong Kong, the highly anticipated 21st Hong Kong International Literary Festival has announced its first slate of writers. New lyric dispatches allow us to hear from a variety of voices from Palestine. Finally, fellowships and festivals from India are worth your attention. Read on to learn more!
Jacqueline Leung, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong:
After a two-year-long hiatus with its main website, Cha, Hong Kong’s popular English literary journal, is open for submissions again from July for their Auditory Cortex 2021 special feature. Co-edited by Lian-Hee Wee and Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, the issue accepts poetry written in various Englishes, acknowledging the diversity of the language across multiple territories. The auditory cortex is the first point in the brain reacting to sound, and as such the publication is looking to document the acoustics of lesser known varieties through a series of recordings accompanying the texts. Cha is also calling for abstracts for the Backreading Hong Kong’s 2021 academic symposium, “Translating Hong Kong,” with Hong Kong Baptist University and The University of Toronto Scarborough this December. In addition to new insights into translation practice, the symposium hopes to explore the cultural and linguistic implications of interpreting works about Hong Kong, whether translation reiterates the colonial dominance of English and how it feeds into the city’s culture.
Back for its 21st year, the Hong Kong International Literary Festival just announced its initial line-up of writers and speakers. Held between November 5 to 15, this year’s festival is entitled the Rebound Edition and will focus on themes of resilience, recovery, and mental health. It has so far confirmed the appearance of Amor Towles, Paula Hawkins, Damon Galgut, and Mary Jean Chan, as well as local emerging writers Alice Chan, Virginia Ng, and Angus Lee, with more details to be announced in late September.
Beyond the page—and my usual reportage of Chinese-English translation happenings—Asia Society Hong Kong Center is hosting a series of six screenings and talks of Korean films with English subtitles between now and December. Titled “Beyond K-pop: Korean Families in Films,” the program features new and classic hits including Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019), Ode to My Father (2014), and Minari (2021) which won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language. The films offer portrayals of Korean families in different eras and social contexts, addressing issues of historical strife, separation, and immigration.
Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine
Since early June, new lyric dispatches are being added to the special Baffler magazine section on poetry from Palestine, which is curated by Fady Joudah, the Palestinian American physician, poet, and translator. So far, eleven poems by eight different poets, all translated by Joudah, have appeared on the site, starting with Rawan Hussin’s “Dawn” on June 1, and most recently featuring Ahalam Bsharat’s “Obeidah the Cow” on August 31.
Fady Joudah, a poet himself, is one of the leading translators of modern Palestinian poetry. He is the recipient of the Griffin Prize for International Poetry in 2013 for his translation of Ghassan Zaqtan’s Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me. His translations of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry have also won him a Banipal Prize from the UK and a PEN USA award. His debut collection of poetry, The Earth in the Attic (2008), won the 2007 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Joudah followed his second book of poetry, Alight (2013) with Textu (2014), a collection of poems written on a cell phone wherein each piece is exactly 160 characters long. Aside from the numerous published translations, he also has several published poetry collections, the latest being Tethered to Stars: Poems (2021). Along with writing poetry, Joudah volunteers for Doctors Without Borders and serves as an ER physician. He lives in Houston, Texas.
You can read some of his poem translations in Asymptote, as well as his nonfiction piece “Dear God, Your Message Was Received in Error” in our July 2013 issue, which also features a piece of him on another Palestinian poet, Ghassan Zaqtan.
Suhasini Patni, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from India
August, celebrated as Women in Translation month, spotlighted many female authors through online talks, book sales, and festivals.
Kitaab Khana hosted an online conversation between India’s first female graphic novelist, Amruta Patil, and poet Arundhati Subramaniam regarding her latest release, Woman Who Wear Only Themselves: Conversations with Four Travelers on Sacred Journeys. When Subramaniam discovered her interest in bhakti poetry, she realized that there were many women in South India on the spiritual path, challenging societal norms, that had remained uncelebrated and secluded. In her preface to the book, she wrote: “Mythology is laden with male questor myths, but the female questors are more elusive. They often feature as piecemeal cameos, as the object of the search rather than its subject.”
SheThePeopleTV held a day-long festival called “The Written Word and a Woman’s Place.” Panels explored the role of women in mythology, talks by debut novelists, writing on protest, etc. Author of Song of Draupadi, Ira Mukhoty spoke about the importance of recognizing the power of women in Indian mythology. “Draupadi’s story, and indeed that of many of the women characters of the Mahabharat, remains even more relevant today, as we increasingly begin to question the established patriarchal and Brahminical structure of our society,” she said in an earlier interview with the New Indian Express.
The New India Foundation announced fellowships for the translation of non-fiction books into English. Proposals are being invited from translators for ten languages—Assamese, Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Odia, Tamil and Urdu—the fellowship lasts for a period of six months, with a stipend of Rs 6 lakh to each recipient. In an interview with Scroll.in, NIF trustee Niraja Gopal Jayal spoke of the importance of this fellowship. Highlighting that fiction and poetry often find their way into English translation, they spoke of how non-fiction remains invisible: “The idea for the translation fellowships came up in informal conversations on the sidelines of our meetings. It struck us that there is so little we know about non-fiction in the Indian languages.”
South Asia Speaks announced the launch of its second year of mentorship for early career writers from South Asia. The mentors include many established writers in the field like Fatima Bhutto, Avni Doshi, Aruni Kashyap, Arunava Sinha, and others. Applications open on September 1st and last till the end of the month.
While August saw the celebration of many female voices in India, the country also lost one of its most beloved scholars, Gail Omvedt. She co-founded the Shramik Mukti Dal that addressed problems faced by farmers, especially related to caste. Tributes to her can be read here.
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