LITERARY ECHOES: China and the World in Creative Writing

LITERARY ECHOES: China and the World in Creative Writing | A China-U.S. Dialogue Join us at China Institute for a special literary gathering bringing together acclaimed Chinese writers Yu Hua and Xi Chuan, alongside writers, translators, and scholars, to explore contemporary Chinese literature and its dialogue with the world. The symposium opens with a unique literary conversation with Yu Hua and Xi Chuan, reflecting and sharing their creative journeys with New York audiences. Their conversation will be followed by two panel discussions with distinguished speakers exploring how literature captures individual lives and changing societies, and how writing travels across languages and cultures through translation. Featuring conversations in both Chinese and English, Literary Echoes invites audiences to discover the power of storytelling, the richness of contemporary Chinese literature, and the connections that literature creates across cultural boundaries. This program is in collaboration with Beijing Normal University, China National Publications Import & Export (Group) Co., LTD(CNPIEC) Program at a Glance Time | Session 10:00 - 10: 10 | Opening Remarks 10:10 - 10:40 | Featured Literary Conversation: Writing Across Worlds - Yu Hua and XiChuan in New York (in Chinese) 10:40 - 11:25 | Panel I: Writing Our Times - Individual Lives and the Contemporary Chinese Literary Imagination (in Chinese) 11:25 - 11:40 | Intermission 11:40 - 12:25 | Panel II: Beyond Translation - How Literature Travels Across Cultures (in English) 12:25 - 12:30 | Closing Remarks (subject to change) Support Literary and Cultural Exchange Your participation supports China Institute's mission to foster cross-cultural understanding through literature, education, and dialogue. For those who wish to make an additional contribution, please consider selecting our $60 Supporter Ticket includes priority seating and helps China Institute bring distinguished literary voices to New York audiences. We look forward to welcoming you for an inspiring morning of literary discovery and cross-cultural conversation! Speakers Xi Chuan (西川) is one of China’s leading contemporary poets, essayist and translator. Currently a distinguished professor of Beijing Normal University, Xi Chuan has published ten collections of poems, two books of essays and three books of critical writings, in addition to a play and numerous translations of Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, Czeslaw Milosz, Gary Snyder and others. His awards include National Lu Xun Prize for Literature (2001), Author of the Year of the China Book Trade Annual Selection (2018), Swedish Cicada prize for poetry (2018), Japanese Tokyo Poetry Prize (2018). He was also one of the top ten winners of the 1999 Weimar International Essay Prize Contest, Germany. His work has been translated into many languages and was widely anthologized and published in about thirty countries. His book of poems in English translation Notes on the Mosquito: Xi Chuan /Selected Poems (tr. Lucas Klein) published by New Directions, New York, 2012, was awarded ALTA’s 2013 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize and was shortlisted for American 2013 Best Translated Book Award. His second New Directions book Bloom and Other Poems was published recently. The 2019 Poesiefestival Berlin booklet says, “Xi Chuan ist einer der großen Dichter der Gegenwart / Xi Chuan is one of the greats of contemporary poetry.” Yu Hua (余华) is one of China’s most internationally acclaimed contemporary writers. Born in April 1960, Yu Hua began writing in 1983, and his major works include Brothers, To Live, Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, Cries in the Drizzle, The Seventh Day, and City of Fiction, among others. His works have been translated into more than 50 languages and published in over 50 countries. He has received numerous awards, such as the Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy, 1998), Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France, 2004), Prix Courrier International (France, 2008), Giuseppe Acerbi Literary International Prize (Italy, 2014), Velika nagrada Ivo Andrić (Serbia, 2018), Premio Bottari Lattes Grinzane (Italy, 2018), and Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award (Russia, 2022). Lucas Klein (PhD Yale) is a father, writer, and translator. He is also an associate professor in the School of International Letters and Cultures at Arizona State University. He is associate editor of the Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature (Oxford), author of The Organization of Distance (Brill, 2018), co-editor of Chinese Poetry and Translation: Rights and Wrongs (Amsterdam, 2019; free download) and the Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation (2023), and translator of Mang Ke 芒克 (Zephyr, 2018), Li Shangyin 李商隱 (NYRB, 2018), Duo Duo 多多 (Yale, 2021), Xi Chuan 西川 (New Directions, 2012, 2022), and Yu Xuanji 魚玄機 (Oxford, 2024). At ASU he teaches classes on modern and premodern Chinese literature; poetry, translation, and translation theory; meta-sinology; Chinese writing on labor and the environment; and kung-fu movies. Zhang Li (张莉) Zhang Li is Professor and Vice Dean of the School of Chinese Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University, and Vice Chairperson of the Beijing Writers Association. She is the initiator of the "Keep the Faint Flame · Good Books List of Women's Literature". Her works include Opening Her Century: Girl Students and the Emergence of Modern Chinese Women’s Writing, Fiction Landscapes, Keep the Faint Flame, She Has Walked Through Countless Worlds: Xiao Hong and Her Literary World, etc. She has edited books such as Beijing in a Century of Literature. She won the Literary Theory and Criticism Award of the 8th Lu Xun Literature Prize and the Excellent Achievement Award for Women’s Literature Research. Emily Parker is the author of "Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices From the Internet Underground" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Her book has been assigned at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Tufts, UCSD and other schools. Emily has been awarded fellowships at the Council on Foreign Relations, New America, Asia Society and the Carnegie Moscow Center. Previously, Emily was a member of the Policy Planning staff at the U.S. State Department. She was a writer/editor at The Wall Street Journal and an editor at The New York Times. She is the co-founder of LongHash, a blockchain startup that focuses on Asian markets. She has done public speaking all over the world, and has been interviewed on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, BBC and many other television and radio shows. She has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, CNN, Politico, Reuters, MIT Technology Review, Foreign Affairs, WIRED and other publications. Emily has lived in Mainland China, Japan and Hong Kong. She speaks Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, French and Spanish. She graduated with Honors from Brown University and has a Masters from Harvard in East Asian Studies.