Join us for an evening with renowned Chinese writer and UK based novelist, Xiaolu Guo 郭小櫓 in conversation with publisher James Tookey as they dive into layers of contemporary Chinese literature, writing and publishing in and outside the Chinese speaking context, and share their personal experiences as writer and publisher.

The event will mark the in-person launch of The Paper Republic Guide to Contemporary Chinese Literature, a collection of biographical entries covering almost 100 of the most important writers working in the Chinese language today, from Anni Baby to Zhang Yueran, by way of Nobel Prize-winner Mo Yan. The publication covers a wide range of writers from China, Hong Kong, UK, US and topics ranging from Chinese academic writing, science fiction to popular Chinese internet literature.

Event Partnership:

Paper Republic

Biography

Xiaolu Guo 郭小櫓

Xiaolu Guo is a writer and film-maker. Her novels include A Concise Chinese–English Dictionary for Lovers, shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. Her memoir Nine Continents received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2017. Her recent novel A Lover’s Discourse was published by Grove Atlantic in 2020, and was shortlisted for the Goldsmith Prize. She has also directed feature films including She, A Chinese and won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival 2009. She lives in Berlin and London.

James Tookey

James Tookey is the co-publisher at Peirene Press, an independent publisher with a specialism in translated books.