Editors in the Wild
Editors in the Wild
Personal Updates from Behind the Desk
Dear Friends,
We’ve been happily gearing up for the official launch of our seventh issue. Contributor copies have been starting to ship out to our artists and writers all over the world, as well as to our stockists. (Sevens are already at MagCulture in London!)
On Sunday, May 28, we will host an intimate launch in Shanghai. More details on how to RSVP will be sent in the next newsletter soon.
Today’s newsletter will be dedicated, however, to our staff. Primarily volunteer-run, TSLR has always been a project fuelled by passion, friendship, and a good wifi connection. One goal among many for our new and improved newsletter is to feature our talented staff, to help you know more intimately who is behind the scenes making this publication happen. We celebrate Seven, yes. But we also celebrate those who have helped usher her into the world.
What follows is a short compilation of recent news and publications from our staff.
Arthur Solway, Poetry Editor
Solway’s collection of poems is being published by Finishing Line Press.
Friday Night, Shanghai is a love letter to one of the most dynamic cities on the planet. Living as an expatriate in China for well over a decade, Solway’s poems are intimate meditations on what it means to be nomadic at heart, or “stranded in a world that won’t let go.”
Check out the collection here!
Arthur Solway’s poetry and essays have appeared in The Antioch Review, Barrow Street, BOMB, The London Magazine, Salmagundi, Southern Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. His work has also been featured by the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day. His critical reviews and cultural essays can be found in Artforum, Frieze, and ArtAsiaPacific magazines. Living and working in Shanghai for well over a decade, he was the founding director of the first contemporary art gallery from New York to establish itself in mainland China. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, he is a poetry editor for The Shanghai Literary Review and presently lives in Santa Cruz, California.
Hannah Treasure, Poetry Editor
These days I make music in case of emergency, to say there was a voice here, to make my silence sing.
“Road Trip” by Treasure has been recently published in Ghost City Review.
Read it here!
Hannah Treasure is a lecturer in the English Department at Clemson University. Previously she taught at Brooklyn College, where she earned her MFA in poetry in 2020. Her work appears in Cordella Magazine, Sonora Review, No Dear, Claw & Blossom, and Volume Poetry, among others.
Alex Gobin, Visual Editor
“Julien”, a short story by Gobin has been published in the French literary magazine Revue Squeeze.
Read on for an excerpt from the story, translated into English by Gobin.
Si je mets de côté mes fantasmes de petite fille, jamais au grand jamais, parmi tous les rôles dont j’ai rêvé dans ma vie, je n’ai envisagé celui de compagne de, cet être périphérique. Avec Julien j’étais résolue à faire front, ne pas me laisser abaisser, mais ce dont je me suis doutée assez vite, et qui
s’est révélé absolument vrai, c’est que quoi que vous fassiez, vous subissez. Vous subissez l’admiration des autres pour lui, ce génie, maybe the greatest of all time, à qui pourtant vous expliquez vingt fois qu’il ne faut pas mettre les assiettes trop rapprochées dans le lave-vaisselle. Vous êtes témoin de ces scènes où des gens de tout âge traversent la rue pour lui serrer la main d’un air bouleversé. Vous subissez, plus pernicieux encore, cette passion qu’il partage avec d’autres que vous. Car les gens vraiment passionnés ont cette façon involontaire de vous faire regretter votre désintérêt pour cette chose qui les obsède. Vous finissez par éprouver une sotte nostalgie pour un goût que vous n’avez jamais eu.
“If I set aside my childhood fantasies, among all the roles I ever dreamed of for myself, I never even thought for a moment about the role of that peripheral being referred to as the girlfriend of. With Julien, I was determined to stand my ground and not let myself be belittled, but what I quickly suspected, and proved to be absolutely true, is that whatever you do, you are subjected to a lot of things. Subjected to people’s admiration for him, the genius, maybe the greatest of all time, to whom you still need to explain twenty times not to line up the plates too close in the dishwasher. You witness those scenes, people of all ages crossing the street to shake hands with him, looking emotional. More insidiously, you are subjected to this passion he shares with others. Because truly passionate people have this unintentional way of making you regret your lack of interest in the thing that they’re obsessed with. You end up feeling stupidly nostalgic of a taste you never had.”
Read the full piece here!
Alex Gobin, Visual Editor at TSLR, has been published in journals such as Concrete and River River, in addition to his art critic pieces being published in HuArts and Point Contemporain.
Kiril Bolotnikov, Contributing Editor
Bolotnikov was on the longlist for the Disquiet Literary Prize, a North American and Portugal international literary program. The committee further added a statement about his work:
These poems create complex and precise music with breath, with everyday objects, and small moments in time that carry weight.
Read one of his submitted poems below!
Kiril Bolotnikov is a writer, editor and translator who divides his time between Oakland and Shanghai. He is a contributing editor with the Shanghai Literary Review. His writing has appeared in Neocha, Radii, Shaving in the Dark, A Shanghai Poetry Zine, SupChina and Scene4. He currently translates articles for Vogue Business in China and works as a barista. You can find him on Twitter @kbolotnik.
Jady Liu, Visual Editor
Liu’s articles on artists Ren Ri and Jacob Kirkegaard were published by Be Water Journal, an indie creative magazine, in November 2022 and March 2023. Check them out here, here or here!
His poetry was also published by FLANEUR, a bookstore in Chengdu in November 2022.
Check out one of them below.
捕蝇草
捕蝇草的叶片在寒夜翕张
迎合着街上忽闪的暗影
微风送来失却方向的露水
血肉之躯的尖刺渐渐锋利
它的远亲囊袋里漫溢涎水
泛着气泡、鼓胀而又香甜
指引着误入歧途的猎物
遁入本能及其空无的长路
迷途即是这夜的归宿
伴着灯光懵懂说起密语
到白昼一切都蒸发不见
徒留夏天的炎症和晕眩
2022.6.18
You can read the rest here!
Jady Liu is a freelance writer in Beijing. His writings have appeared in The Paper, FT, RADII, Be Water Journal, New Workers Literature, Open Sesame, Poetics for the More-than-Human World, and more.
Juli Min, Editor-In-Chief & Fiction Editor
Min’s first novel SHANGHAILANDERS will be published in May 2024.
Stay tuned for more updates regarding the novel!
Juli Min is a writer based in Shanghai. She is the Editor in Chief and Fiction Editor of The Shanghai Literary Review. In 2022 she completed an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson, and she has been awarded a Swatch Art Peace Hotel artist residency for 2023.
Coming up next: The Infinite Tapestry continues, with a focus on the upcoming TSLR7!
About Zainab Farooqui, Editorial Assistant:
Zainab Farooqui is an avid devourer of fiction, poetry, and tea. Originally from Lahore, Pakistan, her creative and critical interests are in the intersections of gendered literature and South Asia. She can be found in your local coffeehouse debating postcolonial theory or anime episodes.
Preorder our latest issue of The Shanghai Literary Review here!