Giant Ape by Lu Nei, translated from Chinese by Edward Allen from the 8th edition of TSLR. A short story from within a chapter of Lu Nei’s five-part work Mistwalkers 雾行者, published on Jan 1, 2020.

Sonja Srinivasan’s vivid telling of a senator’s wife taking the train out of D.C, a city founded on freedom, raised on decorum, and bolstered by propriety, for New York.

Chris Song’s translation of Ye Si’s “Amélie in Tuen Mun”. After graduating from high school, Amélie and her classmates moved to the city to seek their fortunes. While some joined Triads, committing robberies, and others took part in the Miss Hong Kong pageant, Amélie found work in a diner.

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.