News: New Possibilities for Old Literary Journals

By David Haysom, published

From Bloomberg Businessweek (Chinese edition):

The literary journal Harvest has an online “youth” edition. At the end of April they announced on their official Weibo account that literary enthusiasts could now submit writing through an app called “Hangju” (行距). Furthermore, editors from Harvest would be using the app to offer guidance to writers. In its first ten days online, Hangju received over 600 submissions, the majority of which were passed on to Harvest. Author Wang Ruohan (汪若菡), recipient of the 2011 People’s Literature Novella Award, was amongst those who submitted work. He said the chance to get input from literary editors was his main reason for using the platform. “Writing is like navigating an ocean,” he says, especially for short story writers, who can lose their bearings completely when embarking on a novel. “I got to 60,000 characters in my first full-length novel before realising something had gone wrong, and there was nothing for it but to chuck it in the trash.” There is no more pressing issue when attempting to write than finding the guidance of a reliable editor.

Lots more in the original (Chinese) article about editing, foreign rights and movie adaptations: 老牌文学杂志转型的新可能你们还记得《收获》吗?

You can read a short story by Xu Yigua 须一瓜, one of the writers quoted in the article, in the Winter 2012 issue of Pathlight.

Comments

# 1.   

When good editors get to meet good writers on daily basis, and when time supplies good readership above all else, all shall be well...

susan, August 10, 2016, 9:51p.m.

# 2.   

"In its first ten days online, Hangju received over 600 submissions" ... I wonder how many were there in the last 10 days ?

just sent out the link to 450 member wechat group for 3rd Maimeigui translation prize... deadline is in 5 days!

susan, August 15, 2016, 4:18p.m.

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