About this Event
Bird in Hand and Accent Editions team up to present an evening of translation and Chinese literature, featuring the new translation of MASTERS OF SLEEP, originally written in Chinese by the renowned Zhu Yue.
This conversation will feature one of the translators of MASTERS OF SLEEP, Jianan Qian, in conversation with writer Elizabeth DeMeo. Zhu Yue's new work playfully interrogates many so-called “Western” ideals and values in ways that will foreground this event: To what extent is a person’s physical existence a sufficient expression of their individuality? What is the value of invention if it has no practical use? And how much of ourselves are we willing to sacrifice for wealth and greatness?
And to add another layer: How did the translators approach this content in order to bring it into a new linguistic and cultural context?
We look forward to spending an evening together exploring these ideas.
Books will be available for sale at the event.
Jianan Qian is a bilingual writer and translator. In her native Chinese, she is the author of the story collection People Grow Old, Never Die, the novel No Eggs for Him, the lecture collection How to Read Literary Classics, and the essay collection A Future That Concerns Me. Her work has received literary awards from Mainland China, Taiwan and Malaysia. She has translated several canonical authors into Chinese, including Flannery O’Connor and Shirley Jackson. In English, her writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Millions, The Common, Gulf Coast and elsewhere. She was awarded an O. Henry Prize in 2021.
Elizabeth DeMeo is a writer and a former editor at Tin House, where she acquired and edited books of fiction and literary nonfiction. Books she's edited have been chosen as a best book of the year by the New Yorker and NPR, selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick of the Month and numerous Indie Next List picks, and won the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, Young Lions Fiction Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and Westport Prize for Literature, among other honors. Originally from New Hampshire, she holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Arkansas, where she was Managing Editor of the Arkansas International and the Director of the Arkansas Writers in the Schools program. In 2014, she was a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Maran, Malaysia.
Event venue & nearby stays
Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, United States
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