Every literary community depends on a constellation of magazines, blogs, journals and reviews that help bring writers closer to their readers. Beyond providing unpublished authors with feedback and recognition, they spark conversations about and around books, fostering thoughtful engagement with writers and their work. In recent years, we’ve welcomed a plethora of outlets that publish and engage with new voices from across the wider ‘Asian’ community. What better way to start 2021 than with a quick survey of these up-and-coming platforms?
With some exceptions, I’ll be focusing on publications that have
launched within the last five years, and publish new poetry – though almost
all of them also publish fantastic work in other genres. Of course, we shouldn’t
forget stalwarts like the Hong Kong-based Cha, which just last year published
a powerful retrospective on ‘Tiananmen Thirty Years On’; or Vancouver-based
Ricepaper, which began
in 1994 as a newsletter at the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop. The following
titles simply represent the latest sampling of new publishing initiatives that
deserve a wider audience.
