Mariko Nagai is a much-awarded poet and author, a recipient of the Pushcart Prize in both poetry and fiction, and the most recent winner of the Les Figues Press NOS Book Contest for her forthcoming novel Irradiated Cities. Her collection of poems, Histories of Bodies, won the Benjamin Saltman Prize from Red Hen Press, and her first collection of stories,Georgic: Stories, won the 2009 G.S. Sharat Chandra Fiction Prize from BkMk Press. Her other books include the poetry collection Instructions for the Living and novel Dust of Eden, which we review below. Nagai was born in Tokyo and raised in Europe and America. (more…)

In Andy McGuire’s poetry, we are bombarded with images, from birds to Floridians, mosquitoes to beaches underneath boardwalks. Readers must duck and weave, eluding their sharp edges and simultaneously hoping to catch them like raindrops. McGuire’s poems have appeared in Riddle Fence, Hazlitt, and The Walrus. He earned the right to appear at the Bookworm Literary Festival after winning the first-ever Poetry Games held at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto. (more…)

Jordi Puntí was born in 1967 and lives in Barcelona. He writes in Catalan and has published two books of short stories: Pell d’armadillo (Armadillo Skin) (1998) and Animals tristos (Sad Animals) (2002). In 2010 he published his first novel, Lost Luggage, which is reviewed below. His most recent book is Els castellans (2011), a memoir about the daily life in a Catalan industrial town in the 1970s, focusing on the relationship between Catalan kids and the immigrants arrived from Spain. (more…)

Nicholas YB Wong is a poet of multis — of culture, lingua, layer, dimension. He is, as Ravi Shankar puts it, “the future of global poetry,” one who writes with a multiplicity of voices on a multitude of subjects, from Lady Gaga and Wong Kar-wai to Sharon Olds and Eeyore to the letters of James Schuyler to Frank O’Hara. An instructor at the City University of Hong Kong, he’s the author of the collections Cities of Sameness and, most recently, Crevasse, which has been praised as “a book of action” (Jericho Brown). (more…)

Poets are well represented at this year’s festival, hailing from China, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Canada, Japan, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and more. But we start with Richard Blanco, the highest profiled poet in our lineup, who rocketed to fame in 2013 when he read a poem to 40 million people watching live at Barack Obama’s Second Inauguration. (more…)

Xue Xinran, who writes under the pen name Xinran, found fame in China between 1989 and 1997 as host of the popular call-in radio program “Words on the Night Breeze.” She has since written several books that has won her an international following. Her first book, The Good Women of China, was an international bestseller upon publication in 2002. She followed up with Sky Burial, a true account of a Han woman’s journey and experiences in Tibet. Her latest book, reviewed below by Laurie O’Donnell, is Buy Me the Sky: The Remarkable Truth of China’s One-Child Generations. (more…)

A Yi (real name Ai Guozhu) is “one of the most gifted Chinese authors in recent times,” according to Nobel-nominated poet Bei Dao. His star has been rising in the global literary scene as well: he’s been published in Granta and The Guardian, and A Perfect Crime, his first novel translated into English, was published in June 2015. He is the author of two other novels in Chinese, Now, What Shall I Do Next? and Where Is Spring, and the short story collections Grey Stories and The Bird Saw Me. Before settling down at age 32 to write fiction, A Yi worked as a police officer, secretary, and editor, with a brief stint as editor-in-chief of the edgy literary magazine Chutzpah. (more…)

By the numbers, this year’s Bookworm Literary Festival is our largest ever, featuring more than 180 writers, thinkers, and performers hailing from over 30 countries. From March 11 to 27, they will converge across three Bookworm cities (Beijing, Chengdu, Suzhou) plus Ningbo and Shanghai to participate in 300-some events, including book talks, panel discussions, performances, and workshops. As always, there will be children’s events, comedy, screenings, and a strong bilingual element. (more…)

We’re still a few days away from getting our hands on the printed program, but those with Internet connections can download an advance copy of the 2016 Bookworm Literary Festival brochure. It’s 96 pages cover to cover, which makes it our largest ever. (more…)

Physical tickets for the 2016 Bookworm Literary Festival go on sale tomorrow — that’s Wednesday, February 24 — at start of business day (9 am).

You can also, of course, continue to purchase tickets from online (and pick them up from The Bookworm any time). Either way, check out our program, and let us know if you have any questions.