Eric lived in Beijing from late 2001, when he studied Chinese at the Central University for Nationalities, until the end of 2016. He began struggling through Wang Xiaobo at an early date, and kept at it through the intervening years. He is the recipient of a PEN translation grant for Wang Xiaobo's My Spiritual Homeland and a NEA grant for Xu Zechen's Running Through Zhongguancun, later published as Running Through Beijing, which was shortlisted for the National Translation Award.
His short-story translations have appeared in magazines including The New Yorker, Granta, and n+1. He also writes occasional cultural criticism, which has appeared in the New York Times and Foreign Policy, among other venues.
Eric also runs a US-based company called Coal Hill Books which provides rights agency and publishing consulting for Chinese and international publishers seeking to do business with each other. You can reach him there at eric@coalhillbooks.com.
| Mister Lover | by Wang Xiaobo | July 16, 2015 |
| Silver Tiger | by Lu Yang | The New Yorker |
| The Real Censors of China | The New York Times | |
| A Brief History of Time | by Xu Zechen | N+1 |
| Irony is Good! | Foreign Policy Magazine | |
| Broken | Words Without Borders |
The Paper Republic database exists for reference purposes only. We are not the publisher of these works, are not responsible for their contents, and cannot provide digital or paper copies.
By Eric Abrahamsen, October 6, '17
Deadline is March 1st, 2018 for the Vermont Studio Center/Luce Foundation Chinese Poetry & Translation Fellowships. Five poets and five translators can travel to Vermont for a four-week residency to work on poetry and poetry translation. See this link for details, and information on past fellows.
By Eric Abrahamsen, February 18, '17
China's domestic literary prizes are often viewed with uncertainty from abroad: Who runs them? Are they trustworthy? How are the different prizes specialized? Which should we be paying attention to? We've asked Chen Dongmei, who usually exerts her influence behind the scenes, to step forward and give us a rundown of prizes for adult and children's literature, to try to shed some light on these questions.
By Eric Abrahamsen, February 11, '17
The following post, part of our Global Literature in Libraries Initiative series, is an email interview with Ken Liu, author and translator of science fiction. Apart from his own fiction Ken is best known around here as the translator of volumes I and III of the Three Body Problem, together with Joel Martinsen, and Clarkesworld magazine's in-depth interest in Chinese science fiction. We talked to him about what Chinese sci-fi has to offer -- take a look!**
By Eric Abrahamsen, February 1, '17
Zhang Lijia, author of Socialism is Great!, is talking about her first novel, Lotus, February 1 7pm at the NY Barnes & Noble, 82nd and Broadway. See this link for more information, and stop by if you're in town!
From the event blurb: Inspired by the secret life of author Lijia Zhang's grandmother, Lotus follows a young woman torn between past traditions and modern desires as she carves out a life for herself in China's "City of Sins." This perceptive, sensitive novel examines what it means to be an individual in a society that praises restraint in and obedience from its women.
By Eric Abrahamsen, February 1, '17
The wonderful people over at the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative have designated February as China month, and have asked us to help! So for a whole month, we'll be posting on the GLLI site and on Paper Republic. First post - for the GLLI readers - what is Paper Republic? Who are we and what do we do?
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 16, '16
We've put together a little video retrospective of last August's Beijing International Book Fair Literary Salons, you can see the video below.
It's a bit bittersweet, coming soon after the Bookworm Literary Festival announced its own difficulties. These are hard times for art and culture in China, and we hope to see them back on their feet soon!
By Eric Abrahamsen, October 7, '16
Ge Fei's new English novel, The Invisibility Cloak, translated by our own Canaan Morse, is out next week, published by The New York Review of Books Press next week. Ge Fei is visiting the Big Apple and environs, and those of you in Manhattan or Brooklyn have three chances to see him talk about his new book!
The first event is at Columbia University on October 12th (Wednesday) starting at 4pm, where Ge Fei will be joined by Canaan to discuss the book.
Then later that evening (October 12th, 7pm) Ge Fei appears at the Community Bookstore in Brooklyn, in conversation with Michael Barron.
Lastly, he'll be at the China Institute on the 13th (Thursday) at 6:30pm, with Zhang Xudong.
If you're in town, take the opportunity to see Ge Fei talk! He's a great writer, a great big brain, and a wonderful speaker.
By Eric Abrahamsen, October 3, '16
We've got a new look! With thanks to Sun Xiaoxi, the designer behind the 2015 BIBF look. 21st century, here we come!
It's possible that people using truly ancient versions of Internet Explorer might have some difficulties – please let me know in the comments.
Meanwhile, this will be a good starting place from which to start working on better entry points to the database. A nice winter project...
By Eric Abrahamsen, September 23, '16
English PEN has this program called "PEN Presents", where they provide translators with funding to promote books they want to translate, and this year they're accepting applications from East and South-East Asia. From their announcement
PEN Presents aims to help publishers to discover – and publish – the most exciting books from around the world, whilst supporting emerging translators in their development as advocates for international literature. Each year the initiative presents six exciting books by contemporary authors, recommended by literary translators, which have not yet been acquired for English-language publication. Each round of PEN Presents focusses on a different region of the world.
They're working with the Asia Literary Review for this year's program – see this link for application instructions. The deadline is December 5, 2016.
By Eric Abrahamsen, August 26, '16
So we're about halfway through our program of literary events surrounding the 2016 Beijing International Book Fair, which so far has been great fun. Last year, the first year Paper Republic did these "Literary Salons", we were too exhausted to post about this at all, let alone halfway through the program, so I suppose this is progress! To me, it's clear what "progress" consists of: more hands on deck. Last year it was just Dongmei and me; this year we've added Min Jie as our third PR employee, and have a team of three awesome interns, Lirong, Yutong, and Mingjun. The whole thing is much more under control, and it's possible to actually enjoy ourselves!
I'll post a few pictures below, but first a few memorable moments:
By Eric Abrahamsen, June 16, '16
So, it’s rather gone by in a whirlwind, but we’ve reached the end of our first year of Read Paper Republic. Starting June 18 of last year, we’ve published 53 short pieces online, one each Thursday (there’s 53 weeks in a year, right?), and today’s publication of Li Jingrui’s One Day, One of the Screws Will Come Loose marks the end of what we’ve come to think of as “Read Paper Republic, Season One”.
We’re taking a short break! Nicky Harman, Helen Wang and Dave Haysom have done a remarkable amount of work over the past year, and it's time for a breather while we think about where to go from here.
Apropos of that, we have a request to make of you! We’ve created a very short online survey that we very much hope you’ll take a moment to fill out. It’s only a page, and will be invaluable to us as we look back over the past year of publications, and think about the future. Please take five minutes and help us fill it out!
So what will be next? We’re not sure yet. Over the next six months, we’re likely to make some more additions to the RPR lineup, probably based around events and author visits in various parts of the world. “Season One” was done with no funding whatsoever (thanks to all our editors, translators and authors!), and we’re very aware that we could make a hypothetical “Season Two” a lot better with a bit of support.
Got any good ideas for doing that? Please let us know in the survey!
By Eric Abrahamsen, May 28, '16
2016 is, everyone agrees, a bad year for China. Usually, what a bad year consists of is everyone telling each other “It’s a bad year here in China”. But there’s good evidence that this year is objectively worse than most. First, there’s Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption crusade, which might be a righteous attempt to return the government to the strait and narrow, but also might be a thinly-disguised campaign to rid the official ranks of the less-than-loyal – and, sadly, is probably both. The past twelve months seem have been a record season for lawyer jailing which is always a really, really bad sign. The internet occasionally verges on unusable. Hong Kong booksellers are disappearing. For some reason, the fact that women’s-rights activist Xiao Meili was stopped by police outside the Beijing Bookworm and turned back from an event she was supposed to attend really drove it home for me.
Even in better times, China’s publishing industry generally leads the nation in gratuitous timidity. The echo-chamber effect is particularly strong here – whispered rumors, sidelong glances, knowing nods, and then the quiet consensus that “we’d better not risk it”. In a country where everyone is kept guessing by the capriciousness of those in power, publishers seem to have more sensitive antennae than pretty much anyone else out there. And apart from occasional meetings with SAPRFFT (where the government directives rarely amount to anything more specific than “be careful, this is a bad year for China”), publishers don’t have much more to go on than water-cooler gossip.
That, and the occasional castastrophic exercise of brute authority.
By Eric Abrahamsen, April 13, '16
The big recent news in Chinese children's literature is Cao Wenxuan's winning of the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award, sometimes called the "Nobel Prize for Children's Literature". It's a big deal inside China, where the media closely watches the progress of the prize.
Like the Nobel, the prize is given to a writer for their entire oeuvre, not for any book in particular, but despite this everyone still points to works in particular. In this case, that's probably Bronze and Sunflower, translated by Helen Wang and published in the UK last year by Walker Books. In honor of the win, we conducted an email interview with Helen about her views on Cao's works (in case you didn't know, Helen is also one of the editors of Read Paper Republic, and is currently to be found representing PR at the London Book Fair). See below for the full interview.
By Eric Abrahamsen, March 30, '16
Paper Republic is looking for an intern in Beijing to work with us on literary and publishing events this year, from late spring to early fall. Think you might be interested? Drop us a line!
In addition to our usual activities, Paper Republic is running two larger events this year, and need more hands on deck. In late June we’re hosting a publishing fellowship, where publishers and editors will come from around the world to spend a week in Beijing, getting to know Chinese writers and publishers. Then in late August is the Beijing International Book Fair, when we’ll be conducting a small literary festival as part of the Fair.
We need someone in Beijing with an interest (and preferably experience) in literature, publishing, and translation. We’re really hoping to find someone who is strong in both English and Chinese, but don’t mind what nationality you are. We need someone who’s organized, motivated and creative, and who thrives on the unexpected.
We need someone who can dedicate at least fifteen hours week to the job, preferably more, and who can join us at our office in Beijing at least two days a week.
Helping us plan literary and publishing events, arranging itineraries and schedules, writing news copy, liaising with publishers and editors, and picking famous writers up from the airport.
A fun working environment with entertaining co-workers, a chance to meet all manner of people, a small monthly stipend, letters of recommendation, good coffee, and some unique experiences.
If you think you fit the bill, and are available from around April to the end of August, get in touch with us at info@paper-republic.org. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
By Eric Abrahamsen, February 8, '16
So, following custom in many places on the internet, we thought it would be nice to do an end-of-the-year what-we’ve-been-up-to retrospective, now that 2015 is nearly over and 2016 is right… What’s that? 2015 already over? Not in our neighborhood! As far as we’re concerned, these are the last days of Yi Wei (乙未), and come Monday we’ll be entering Bing Shen (丙申), the Year of the Fire Monkey (hence the excerpt from Journey to the West, aka “Monkey”, that we just published on Read Paper Republic). None of this newfangled Gregorian tomfoolery around here. We might consider the Julian calendar… but no.
What have we been up to over the past lunar year? Here’s a brief rundown:
