From December 19-21 I’ll be speaking at the inaugural “Damn True” Sinophone non-fiction writing conference in Tokyo.

Why Sinophone and why Tokyo? Over the past decade or so, two things have happened.

 One, the space for independent Chinese-language writing in China has shrunk to virtually nil. Once, China boasted a vibrant scene of independent non-fiction writing, something I captured in this 2015 NYRB article about Peter Hessler and his acolytes (which you can read here in the original, behind a paywall but with minimal effort, or here on the Asia Society’s ChinaFile website). 

The changes in China since then have driven many of China’s best writers overseas, including to places like Tokyo. This was nicely captured by the former New York Times correspondent Chang Che in this New Yorker article.  

So, a couple of months ago, the organizers of a non-fiction writing conference in Tokyo contacted me, asking if I’d speak about my book Sparks, as well as the (maybe more important) spinoff of that project, the China Unofficial Archives, www.minjian-danganguan.org. I agreed and have since then been working on this talk. I hope it’s of interest. For those who can’t attend, I’ll find out if it was recorded and post here, or publish some notes. 

For those of you in the region, I hope to see you in person. Below are some images.

Until then!

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