Criticism editor Carlos Rojas introduces the section's contributions, from global climate change, the Israel-Hamas conflict, the political-economic crisis facing contemporary China, and how we understand failure itself, describing the essays as observations as well as interventions into the phenomena they describe.

Comparative literature scholar Irving Goh focuses on the reality of failure itself. Noting that many scholars working in a burgeoning field that could be called failure studies tend to focus on failure as a path to eventual success, Goh instead proposes that it would also be useful to focus on failure as failure.

Read "Cycle" by John Yau, the prolific and accomplished poet, art critic, and curator who has published over 50 books of poetry, fiction, and art criticism.

Read six transcreations from Chinese to English by Joshua Ip, a Singaporean poet, editor and literary organiser. Ip has published six-ish poetry collections, edited eleven anthologies, and co-founded Sing Lit Station. His latest book, translations to the tanglish (Math Paper Press, 2021) gathers contemporary and anachronistic translations of classical Tang/Song Dynasty poetry.

Seas and history are strewn with tales and remnants of tsunamis, cyclones, and rogue waves that defy our imagination and challenge our survival. Through millennia the ocean has been cursed for its fickleness and spite, blamed for death and destruction. The ocean, however, has a simple defense against these harsh accusations: it is simply doing the bidding of outside forces. Only when pushed is its fury unlocked. 

Sarah Arvio is the author of night thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis, Sono Cantos, and Visits from the Seventh. Her most recent work is a translation of poems and a play by Federico Garćia Lorca, Poet in Spain.

Mire Lee is (b. 1988) lives and works between Seoul, South Korea, and Amsterdam, Netherlands. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the Department of Sculpture (2012) and a graduate degree in media art (2013) at the Seoul National University College of Fine Arts. Her recent solo exhibitions include Black Sun (2023) at the New Museum, New York; Look, I’m a fountain of filth raving mad with love (2022) at ZOLLAMTMMK, MMK Frankfurt; HR Giger & Mire Lee (2022) at Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; and Carriers (2020) at the Art Sonje Center, Seoul.

Read "Supernatural Bread," a powerful poem from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gregory Pardlo’s 2024 collection Spectral Evidence, which into themes of devotion, beauty, art, and the criminalization of Black bodies, reflecting on justice and how these issues are woven into our present, our history, and the Western canon.

Mark L. Clifford's Let There Be Light explores the pivotal role of electrification in Hong Kong's 20th-century success, detailing how a power company and its visionary founder fueled postwar economic growth, spurring political and social change amid Hong Kong’s evolving relationships with China and the UK.

In February 2024, TSLR sat down with Leta Hong Fincher, a leading voice in the intersection of gender and social change in China. As an acclaimed journalist and scholar, Fincher’s work sheds critical light on the complexities of women’s rights, feminism, and the intricate power dynamics at play in modern Chinese society.

Yan Lianke, Chinese author, novelist and professor of Chinese literature at Renmin University in Beijing, examines contemporary China through the precepts of knowing without speaking, speaking without exposing, and using mountains as lakes and mulberry trees as locust trees.

Film scholar and documentary film maker Simone Brioni introduces Crazy Fish Sing, a visual art book inspired by Suranga Katugampala’s forthcoming film Still Here.

Li Jing (李静, b. 1971) is a prominent Chinese playwright and literary critic, currently serving as the editorial director of Beijing Daily (北京日报). Her third play, Rong Yi’s Coat (戎夷之衣, 2022), is now available in translation by Dr. Andreea Chirita, a Chinese Studies lecturer at the University of Bucharest.

Writer and musician AM Ringwalt reviews Jesse Nathan’s debut poetry collection Eggooth (2023), describing how Nathan wields refrain as a structural and sonic device as well as an urgent means of reconciling with family history, geographic place, and past and present selves.

Award-winning translator Nicky Harman introduces Chinese modernist woman writer Ling Shuhua (1900-1990) and her story “Writing a letter.” Active in literary and artistic circles of the 1920s and 1930s, Ling Shuhua was unique in having close connections with the Bloomsbury group; she was friends with Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and Vita Sackville-West.