LOGO

On Saturday, September 6th at 2pm-4:30pm, FemBooks in Taipei is inviting Lin Hsin-Hui, the author of Contactless Intimacy and Human Glitches, as well as Jenna Tang, the translator of Lin Yi-Han's novel, Fang Si-Chi's First Love Paradise, to share their experiences bringing Taiwanese literature on queerness and gender topics out to the world. 

This session will invite both Hsin-Hui and Jenna to talk about the process of translation, what it means to share Taiwanese stories overseas, and feedback they received in their separate journeys. What does it mean to share literary works internationally, as a Taiwanese writer, scholar, or translator, especially when they work in two separate languages—Mandarin Chinese and English? Both Hsin-Hui and Jenna will share their journeys touring in Italy, the United States, and other countries, and speak to how touring as artists reshape their own works and identities. 

The first time Hsin-Hui and Jenna crossed paths with each other was at the 2021 Transpacific Literary Project: Queer Time, a Special Notebook of Taiwanese Tongzhi Literature, gathering over 10 short pieces in translation from Taiwanese queer writers, organized by writers Chi Ta-wei and Ariel Chu. This collaborative project includes Lin Hsin-Hui’s short story, “Peeling Off” translated by Ye Odelia Lu, as well as writer Leah Yang’s “Nobi Nobita’s Body” translated by Jenna Tang.

In the years after the publication of Queer Time, both Hsin-Hui and Jenna had been invited to share their works in translation overseas—what does it mean for the both of them, as a Taiwanese writer or translator, to build connections between Taiwanese queer stories and international audiences? What does the process of bringing queer literature out to a bigger world look like? How do elements of sci-fi, futuristic visions, technologies, and more, play into the possibility of creating conversations between world literature and art?