This week, our editors from around the world report on book-crafting as political resistance and new poetry anthologies in Puerto Rico, a controversial book fair in Hong Kong, and the recovery after decades of a lost manuscript by a major literary figure in Sweden. Read on to find out more!
Cristina Pérez Díaz, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Puerto Rico
The poets Nicole Delgado and Xavier Valcárcel founded Atarraya Cartonera in 2009. Making books out of discarded cardboard boxes was their response to the economic crisis just beginning to hit Puerto Rico—the result of more than a decade of neoliberal policies and obscene corruption. In the 1990s, neoliberalism had left its mark on the book market with the arrival of the gigantic US chain Borders, whose monopoly forced many small independent bookstores out of business. Borders sold books mostly in English, which clashed with the reality that Puerto Rico’s first language is Spanish and most of the population is not bilingual. In their stores, Puerto Rican literature was showcased in a small shelf under the headline, “Of local interest.” Nicole and Xavier paid frequent visits to Borders but through the back door. They took the stores’ discarded cardboard boxes to handcraft Atarraya’s own “of local interest” books. Thus, they turned book-crafting into a political gesture by looking at the neoliberal crisis, as Nicole puts it, “not as an obstacle but rather as a material to work with.” The press participated in a larger web of cardboard presses in Latin America, each in its own way a response to a national and global crisis. Atarraya was hence an effort to connect with literary movements in other parts of Latin America, something that has always been hard in Puerto Rico because of the trade limitations imposed by the US. Active until 2016, Atarraya published a total of twenty-four poetry titles, all of which are now available for free as pdfs on its archival blog.
Nicole and Xavier have continued collaborating––and dream of reviving Atarraya one day. Last month, they co-hosted a virtual editing workshop at La Impresora, a publishing press and Risograph shop founded in 2016 by Nicole with fellow poet and editor Amanda Hernández. La Impresora recently received a grant from Proyecto Inversión Cultural, which has facilitated, among other things, the offering of free workshops. The first, addressed to emerging writers without a published book, tackled the ropes of the editorial process. Together with the ten participants who were all in their early twenties, Nicole and Xavier rehearsed what goes into bookmaking, including content, conceptualization, and production. The result is a collaborative, forthcoming anthology including poems from each of the attendants. The title, Ese lugar violento que llamamos normalidad (That violent place we call normality), reveals how things have and have not changed in the ten years since Xavier and Nicole edited a first poetry anthology, back with Atarraya Cartonera. The latter’s title was Plomos (Lead Sinking Weights), a loaded word that simultaneously alludes to the small weights used for sinking the fishing net, to water contamination by lead, and to gun violence––part of Puerto Rico’s “normality.” As Nicole and Xavier write in the blog, “any relationship between that word and the violent circumstances of the country or with the contamination caused by certain heavy metals, is absolutely intentional.” Back in 2012, there was room for metaphoric language. In 2022, an emerging generation of writers names violence with even more earnest precision.
Jacqueline Leung, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong
The Hong Kong Book Fair completed its thirty-second edition last week with a reported attendance of 850,000 visitors and more than 700 exhibitors. With its theme of “History and City Literature,” the fair invited speakers including Mao Dun Literature Prize winner Liu Zhenyun, the author of One Sentence Is Ten Thousand Sentences. The fair had been embroiled in controversy during the weeks leading up to its commencement after rejecting applications for participation from independent publishers Hillway Press and One of a Kind, known for releasing more politically sensitive titles. In response to the situation, independent publishers had gathered to organize a Hongkongers’ Book Fair, which was eventually shut down by the owner of the event venue on the grounds of alleged violations to the property lease. Similarly, fairgoers report an absence of critical political content at the Hong Kong Book Fair as the city celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of its handover back to China, raising conversations yet again about the city’s diminishing freedoms for publishing and expression.
Following the publication of her novel The Imperial Astronomer, Xi Xi also recently released Carnival of Animals (《動物嘉年華》), a bilingual collection of her animal poems translated by Jennifer Feeley and edited by poet and critic Ho Fuk-yan. The collection contains twenty-three poems written by the author in the past five years, with the majority published for the first time. Featuring a rich cast of organisms from sloths to slugs, the poems are whimsical and humorous, conveying Xi Xi’s rich imagination of non-anthropocentric existence and communion. They are accompanied by illustrations by various artists and writers from Hong Kong, including Chan Lai Kuen, Dorothy Tse, and Wong Yi.
Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
One of the worst manuscript thefts of modern times in Sweden may soon be resolved. A notebook belonging to August Strindberg (1849–1912), one of Sweden’s most renowned authors of all time, was lost from the National Library of Sweden in the 1970s. It was a small notebook, used by Strindberg between the years 1893–1895, which he spent in Germany and Paris. The notebook includes drawings as well as names and addresses that are very interesting to Strindberg researchers, as the information reveals who Strindberg was in contact with during these years. Early last month, the notebook was up for sale at the British auction house Sotheby’s, listed for a starting price of £15,000. The police are now investigating the theft, while Sotheby’s soon withdrew the notebook from the auction. Strindberg was an early modernist, active both as a painter and photographer, as well as a poet and novelist––but internationally most known as an early modernist playwright, famous for plays like Miss Julie, The Father, and Dance of Death. While it may be difficult to find out exactly what happened to the notebook after fifty years, at least it may finally be restored to the Strindberg collection at the National Library.
Although already famous for his writing during his lifetime, Strindberg never received any literary awards. Two contemporary Swedish writers who, unlike Strindberg, have been awarded for their writing, are Kerstin Ekman and Moa Backe Åstot. Norrlands litteraturpris is a literary prize that has been awarded to the best books with a clear link to northern Sweden since 1973. Kerstin Ekman was first published in 1959 and has since published almost forty books in various genres, including the novels Blackwater and Dog, which are available in English translations. Ekman was awarded the Norrlands litteraturpris for her most recent novel, Löpa varg (The Wolf Run)—a short but rich novel about an aging huntsman and his changed relation to the forest, hunting, his wife, and the memories of his life. Moa Backe Åstot was awarded the prize for her first published book, the YA novel Himlabrand (Polar Fire), which is set in Sápmi and depicts the young reindeer herder Ánte as he explores his feelings towards his best friend Erik, which may not be accepted in the community.
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