Li Weijia Starry Night 1. Spring festival, 2008 “Wake up, little lazy worm.” “Please, Grandma, just one more minute…” I buried my head into the quilt and turned over. “Well, it’s snowing outside and…” “What?!” I threw the sheets back and jumped out of bed. “Wait! Put on your coat!” “Snowing! It’s snowing!” I […]
Category: International Writers Special Edition 2017
Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar On Versification —double acrostic for Alfred Corn Perhaps it’s the kind of dream game you play in your sleep,or the residue of books you’ve read, sitting in your armchair,even—or perhaps especially—in retreat from memory’s palazzoto those vague stirrings that resemble imaginative freedoms,ice riding air toward its […]
Ravi Shankar and George Szirtes
Ravi Shankar and George Szirtes excerpts from A Field Guide to Southern China Impressions of Impressions of Liu Sanjie Not a show as much as spectacle,not a story as much as a show: a few hundredperformers upon the Li River, the twelve limestonepeaks a presence that seems to grow in moonlightto accompany an opera sung […]
Rúnar Vignisson
Rúnar Vignisson Sandals I arrived at the hospice at the designated time. I was going to use my lunch break for this. My father-in-law had asked me to drive him to a shoe shop to buy some new sandals, though I don’t know why he asked me rather than Anna. One of his big […]
Fan Dai
Fan Dai The Privileges of a Writer “You’d better be careful.” My face was right at my husband Jigang’s, my nose almost touching his, as I opened the door for him after 11:00 pm, “’cause I can explode any second!” Jigang walked into our sitting room, more bewildered than upset, “What’s that for? I […]
Daan Heerma Van Voss
Daan Heerma van Voss The Rottweiler A Christmas Tale To his surprise she tasted of buttermilk. Not of ordinary milk, not low-fat French cream cheese or Greek yogurt, but of buttermilk. He brushes his hand between the curtains, and makes a small peephole so he can see the woman unlocking her bike, while a […]
Li Cuixin
Li Cuixin Dancing in the Dark “I am a girl. But I love girls.” When this fact first struck me, I felt my heart sinking and my legs trembling before the computer screen, staring at the words “Lesbian” and “Queer” as if I had been diagnosed with an incurable disease. It was about nine years […]
Ling Li
Sitting the Month Ling Li On our way back home from the hospital, my husband reassured me, Don’t worry. We’ve made a deal. My mum will take care of the baby and your mum will take care of you. Day 4 Mum arrived with a huge jar filled with sweet rice wine and […]
Alison Wong
Alison Wong A New Kind of New Zealand Road Movie In 1902 the SS Ventnor sank off the coast of the Hokianga, a remote region on the west coast of the Far North of New Zealand. The ship was transporting the bones of 499 Chinese New Zealand gold miners for reburial in their home […]
Bárbara Colio
Bárbara Colio Postcards From a Better World 1. Paris. Of course we know that babies don’t come from Paris. But the Dying Cubes do. One hundred percent made-in-France. The market studies, done to determine who would be the exclusive authorized dealer, showed that the great majority of the Globe’s population would feel much safer—and, […]
