Jimin Kang

Swan Song A translation of Tang Siu Wa's 'Swan Song', translated by Michelle Chan Schmidt.

New in The Oxonian Review's 'To Write HK': @arghpoetica.bsky.social's translation of Tang Siu Wa's 'Swan Song' (驪歌): an elegant poem on translational solidarity set against backdrop of the 2006 anti-WTO protest.

'We have never arrived / so we will never leave' www.oxonianreview.com/articles/swa...

🎉Thrilled to announce we'll publish debut novel LESSONS IN ATTENTION by @jiminkanggg.bsky.social -- Fall 2026!

@alyssaogi.bsky.social

I'm thrilled to share that my debut novel, Lessons in Attention, will be out with @tinhouse.bsky.social in 2026! A testament to faith, friendship, and how people change us, it follows a series of friends as they attempt to reach one another across Oxford, Oslo, Brazil. Can't wait to share it 🤗

The book has mesmerized me each time I've read it, and you captured Baldwin's particular magic so well— thank you for writing it, and for your writing in general! 😊

Enamored of the Abyss, by Garth Greenwell On the place of affirmation in art

“What the sentence says is that David and Giovanni’s romance will not last; but that meaning is scored to a music of rapture.” Amazed by @garthgreenwell.bsky.social's take on affirming literature: that affirmation comes as much from style—an author's care—as the subject harpers.org/archive/2025...

Officially arrived at Stanford, aka home for the foreseeable future! This England transplant is yet to be sick of the sun… does one ever tire of it? 🌞

The Freelancer A short story by Emily Wong.

A new short story joins the Oxonian Review's 'To Write Hong Kong' column—steeped in the ambivalence of freelancing and the state of being in between: www.oxonianreview.com/articles/the...

This sounds amazing, Jeff! Any chance the roundtable will be livestreamed / made available online?

For @pawprinceton.bsky.social, I wrote a guide for the perfect day in my favorite city (and current home): Oxford! Find here an itinerary full of good food and sunshine-y spots, weather permitting... paw.princeton.edu/article/tour...

A digital souvenir from an incredible conference in Oxford! (Plus my reflection on how creative non-fiction resembles my understanding of Quaker worship— how, at the heart of an assembly of distinct people and thoughts, we come to reach a universal middle that houses the stories we want to tell.)

La Piccioletta Barca | Where You Need to Go - by Jimin Kang D. had sensed that the monk would talk to her even before he approached. She couldn’t explain why. The encounter ...

Last year I often found myself at a crossroads, thinking: can the events that happen to us be explained by 'divine fate', or is everything totally random? The question made its way into this story, set in Berlin & published this month in La Piccioletta Barca: www.picciolettabarca.com/posts/where-...

‘Home is Where the Heart Used to Be’, a short story by Jimin Kang | The Hong Konger In this flash fiction, the writer explores what it means to belong, and to try to leave.

Tried my hand at writing a short short— a somewhat magical/mystical story about the thin border between rootedness and rootlessness, in The Hong Konger: hongkonger.world/2025/02/28/h...

All Aboard Princeton Journeys, in its 21st year, is looking to attract younger alumni on its excursions, including a recent trip to Argentina

For @pawprinceton.bsky.social, I looked back on 20 years of Princeton’s alumni educational travel program— and got a glimpse of it myself in Buenos Aires 🇦🇷
paw.princeton.edu/article/all-...

Oxford Writers Wheel | Fusion Arts Creative writing workshops for young people in Oxfordshire and beyond.

Honored to have taken part in Oxford Writers Wheel (by @fusionartsox.bsky.social) as a fiction mentor— really moved to see project testimonials live! fusion-arts.org/projects/oxf...

Big thanks to @jennywcreative.bsky.social for the chance to teach creative writing in one of the homes we share 📚✍️

Careerism | The Point Magazine Listen to an audio version of this essay here. An acquaintance of mine, a comedy writer, once admitted to feeling disappointed that she hadn’t won […]

'We know all the reasons and more why the writing life isn’t worth it, and clearly none of them really matter because we still write.' Am feeling this especially in relation to the political possibilities of writing— what do words change? How and when do they matter? thepointmag.com/criticism/ca...

Crocuses growing in Oxford under a blue sky.

Finally returned to Oxford to find that spring has sprung! Hoping that post-6pm sunsets and fresh swathes of crocuses are signs of good things to come 🌼

In Macau this weekend learning more about the revitalisation of Macanese patuá, which has fewer than 1000 speakers left worldwide— and I am, as ever, in admiration of the way in which the city makes its multilingualism known! 🇲🇴

“But if, at the same time, someone else succeeded in capturing his conscience, then man might even spurn Your bread and follow the one who ensnared his conscience… For the mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” (trans. Andrew R. MacAndrew)

Day 13: read the chapter on ‘The Grand Inquisitor’. How chillingly it speaks to the current moment— especially re: the heaviness of exercising our conscience + how easy it is to be (mis)led to compromise it for “the assurance of daily bread.”

For #Lent this year I’ll be spending 40 days reading Dostoevsky’s ‘The Brothers Karamazov’—trying to build the habit of daily reading & tackling a book I’ve been meaning to read for a long time!

(This morning’s reading location: Caffe Trieste in San Francisco…)

I interviewed translators, publishers, and tech experts on AI's impact on literary translation for @pw.org, and what we stand to lose of the 'human and humane' in the literary process: www.pw.org/content/ai_t..., featuring @deepvellum.bsky.social, @societyofauthors.bsky.social & others!

Read our March/April 2025 issue, which includes a feature on Karen Russell’s second novel, The Antidote (Knopf); a look at road trips, retreats, and residencies to take your creative practice off the beaten path; Jimin Kang’s take on AI-generated literary translation; and more! at.pw.org/MarApr2025

Can You Lose Your Native Tongue? After moving abroad, I found my English slowly eroding. It turns out our first languages aren’t as embedded as we think.

From @mmschwartz.bsky.social: "...the closeness we have with a language is not just a product of our ability to use it but of other emotional valences as well. If language is a form of identity, it is one that may be changed by circumstance or even by force of will." www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/m...

Wherever possible please buy your books directly from authors and/or publishers. Even ebooks (then Amazon can't delete them either). We make a better cut and you get the same thing or better, plus Bezos and ilk don't get richer. Win win win.

Walk on Air Against Your Better Judgment What Seamus Heaney gave me

Beautiful read about Seamus Heaney and the power of literature to shape a place, its people, its history, and how words give shape to our lives when the facts of our politics don't "fit into a neat rubric" www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

What Alice Munro Knew The Nobel-winning author’s husband was a pedophile who targeted her daughter and other children. Why did she stay silent?

...From his latest on the legacy of Alice Munro: 'More subtly, it shows how an artistic sensibility, a disposition to see other people as grist for transformation, can give rise to a frigid disengagement.' He manages the opposite! www.nytimes.com/2024/12/08/m...

Have been reading lots of literary profiles lately and utterly blown away by Giles Harvey's—you get a sense of the living, moving person, the cultural contexts that formed them, then incredible literary analysis that somehow makes the tenuous life/art connection work...

We are excited to soon publish the first poems in our new En Route section, curated by our Poetry Editor, Eric Yip. Submissions for this section are accepted on a rolling basis. www.asiancha.com/wp/en-route/

Finally made it to Bluesky! And hoping this will motivate me to venture back into the conversations happening online... 🌏