Matthew Byrne | Writer, Founder, Digital Marketer

What MEGACITY Was

Spittoon MEGACITY is the Spittoon Collective’s first themed sequence of multi-city events around China.

Never have we been so close together and so far apart through our use of social media and the technology that permeates our lives. We seek to explore this modern phenomenon through compelling arts and literary events.

Matthew Byrne

By this point we will have explored Chengdu, Hangzhou and Shanghai, coming back to where the Spittoon Collective was born: Beijing.

How is the day going to look?

15:00 to 17:00, Spittoon Literary Magazine launch

17:00 to 18:00, Megacity Stage: Fiction

18:00 to 19:00, Megacity Stage: Poetry

20:30 to 23:00, Megacity Stage: Spittunes, a poetry and music collaboration

The exploration of the Megacity theme will take the form of three stages: a poetry stage, a fiction stage, and Spittunes. A select group of poets, fiction writers and musicians will work together to interpret the Megacity theme in one of our Beijing collective’s most compelling events to date.

But that isn’t all. The 6th issue of the Spittoon Literary Magazine will be launched on this day. Never before has there been so much concentrated and wonderful content to enjoy in an all day event such as this.

Spittoon Literary Magazine Issue 6 launches

The Spittoon Collective is extremely excited to announce the launch of the sixth issue of the Spittoon Literary Magazine. The Spittoon Literary Magazine is a Beijing-based, biannual publication dedicated to bringing Chinese writing and art to an English-language audience. Our unique team of Western and Chinese writers seeks out, translates, and publishes China’s best, most exciting new voices.

There will be a panel discussion with the magazine’s Editor-In-Chief and representatives from the magazine’s team, and an opportunity to meet the team and purchase your copy.

MEGACITY Stage: Fiction

Some of Beijing’s best fiction writers take our MEGACITY stage.

Deva Eveland is Spittoon’s online fiction editor, as well as the book club coordinator. His short fiction is published or forthcoming in Alternating Current, Shanghai Literary Review, Puerto Del Sol and New Dead Families. He has also collaborated with the historian Hieronymous Atchley on “Oft Neglected Wars”, a compendium of strange and forgotten military conflicts.

Nathan Bennett can be found during the day at his job as an editor, and he writes short fiction and poetry for Spittoon. Mercilessly punning with little or no provocation, he is trying to convert his verbal facility to meaningful verbal felicity through writing. His favorite book is Moby Dick, and his spirit animal is the drummer from Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

Rianka Mohan is a writer who lives in Beijing. She has moderated panels at the 2019 Beijing Bookworm Literary Festival, the EU-China Literature Festival, CultureConnect, and the 2019 Neilson Hays Literature Festival. Before China, she spent three years in Bangkok where she was the Arts and Culture Editor for The Expat Life magazine and wrote a monthly music column for Bangkok 101. She has also served on the Board of The Neilson Hays Library. Prior to that, she spent 15 years in New York working as an investment banker for JPMorgan and Credit Suisse.

Ana Padilla Fornieles is a literary translator, writer and self-taught artist from Spain. Her prose, poetry and comics have been featured in The Shanghai Literary Review, Womankind, Voice and Verse Poetry Magazine, Shaving in the Dark and B.G.U. Be Free. She has authored the zine Hatsumōde and is part of Spittoon Collective. Her translation of Zhe Gui’s novella Fleeing Xinhe Street was published earlier this year by Penguin as part of their Zhejiang Special series.

MEGACITY Stage: Poetry

Anthony Tao’s poetry has appeared in publications such as The Cortland Review, Prairie Schooner, Borderlands, Kartika Review, Frontier and Asian Cha. He and Liane Halton are the people behind “poetry x music”, specifically the album “The Last Tribe on Earth”.

Simon Shieh is a poet and educator living in Beijing. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Spittoon Literary Magazine, which translates and publishes the best new Chinese writers into English. Simon’s work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Daily, Tupelo Quarterly, Muzzle, Spillway, Grist, The Journal, Passages North and BOOTH. His work has twice been nominated for Best of the Net.

Li Wan, born in 1991 in Wuhan, is an editor living in Beijing and working for Horizon Books Publishing Company. She won the Weiming Poetry Prize in 2015. Her poetry and essays appeared in various magazines and periodicals, including Enclave, Shanghai Literature, Essay and Artworld.

Edward Ragg is the author of three collections of poetry: A Force That Takes (2013), Holding Unfailing (2017) and Exploring Rights (forthcoming, 2020), all published by Cinnamon Press in the UK. He has lived in Beijing since 2007 and is a professional wine educator, writer and presenter. Edward runs Dragon Phoenix Wine Consulting with his wife Fongyee Walker. In 2019 he became a Master of Wine.

MEGACITY Stage: Spittunes

Spit-Tunes sets up a band or musical artist with a poet for collaboration on a special musical piece inspired by the poet’s poetry.

Poetry x Music is a collaboration featuring original poetry by Anthony Tao and original compositions on the classical guitar by Liane Halton, meticulously arranged so that the words and music amplify one another. They hope, through this experiment, to present poetry in an active form, full of expansiveness, pathos, and delight. Anthony and Liane were joined by noted sinologist and jazz musician David Moser on the piano for this special performance, debuting multiple new pieces.

Zuo Fei and The Great Buffalo Blues

THE GREAT BUFFALO BLUES is about story telling. They explore soul, funk, rhythm and blues, wall of sound, ska and reggae to create a unique style all their own. They bring the funk. They bring the fire. It’s a high energy stage show guaranteed to keep you moving. Come get your blues on.
Rhythm guitar and vocals: Kamau

Lead guitar and vocals: Hikmat

Bass and vocals: Dooder

Drums: Jake 

Zuo Fei is a translator and the Chinese poetry editor for Spittoon Literary Magazine. She got an MA degree from Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2000.

Nancy Jenkinson Brown and Deva Eveland.

Since 2001, Nancy Jenkinson Brown has been working and studying with top names in many genres across the UK, Europe and Asia. From jazz starts like Sheila Jordan, JZ Festival 2017 guest Tina May, Michael Garrick, Jean Toussaint, and BBC jazz album award winners Brian Kellock and John Rae, to electronica and dance projects with musicians from Hed Kandi and Fenetik. She has also entered the computer games genre, appearing on Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series.

Silent Speech and Jack Calder

Silent Speech formed in 2016, and subsequently signed a record deal with Ruby Eyes Records in 2017. Their first EP, Citybird, was released early 2019. The band is Wu Xiaoran (guitar, vocal, trumpets), Shi Xin (guitar), Fred Shi (bass) and Guoji Erzu (drums, vocal). Citybird seeks to explore a coexisting balance between one’s self and the nurturing environment.

Jack Calder is a teacher of philosophy and literature, and also a writer, poet and critic. He runs the Beijing Writers Network and edits poetry for Spittoon online. He is sometimes lucid and mostly happy.

The details

15:00 to 23:00, Shanlao Hutong No. 14, Dongcheng District, Beijing

50 RMB advance, 60 RMB on the door

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Originally published 3 December 2019 on the Spittoon WeChat channel. Archive reference #13.