TALKING NON-FICTION IN CHINA
I recently attended a remarkable conference on narrative non-fiction in Beijng and came away impressed….
The conference was held at Beijing Normal University and sponsored by Horizon Salon, a small think tank devoted to improving non-fiction writing in China. About 100 people showed up for the three-hour series of talk. I participated in the last session, a round-table and gave my candid views on writing for the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and others.
Despite problems of censorship, this is a really promising field in China, part of which I discussed in an article last year in the New York Review of Books, which you can view unpaywalled here. Writers are eager to use sociological-style survey techniques and literary writing styles in the mold of Peter Hessler to dig deeply into sensitive–but not taboo–topics in China, like migration, poverty, education, and the environment.
THE REVIEW WOULD BE THE BEACON
