Author Biography

Jiang Tao is a Beijing-based poet, literary critic, translator, and historian, known as much for his wry, cerebral verse as his ground-breaking studies of Republican (1911-49) literature. An Associate Professor at Peking University, he has held literary residencies in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States. He was born in Tianjin in 1970, and studied first at Tsinghua University, only to abandon biomedical engineering for a PhD in Chinese literature at Peking University, where he also began teaching in 2002. He wrote poetry as a student, and was editor of the folk poetry journals Offset and Poetry Communications. His first collection Bird Sutras was published in 2005, and he has since published Four Poems and Mourning for Sometimes. He won the Liu Li'an Prize for Poetry in 1997. 
Josh Stenberg is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney. He is the author of Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display (2019) and an upcoming book on Hokkien theatre, as well as the editor of Irina's Hat: New Short Stories from China (2013) and Kunqu Masters on Chinese Theatrical Performance (2022). He translated two volumes of short fiction by Nanjing author Su Tong, short fiction by PRC, Taiwanese, and Southeast Asian Chinese authors, and numerous works of spoken and traditional Chinese theatre. His fiction and poetry have been published in The Antigonish Review, The New Quarterly, CV2, The Dalhousie Review and other literary journals. He has been a fellow of Fulbright Taiwan, the Center for Chinese Studies (National Central Library), the International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden), and the Vermont Studio Centre/Luce Foundation.

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• Advance galleys to Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, NPR.• E-blast announcements and offers of review copies to our list of 250+ reviewers, literary journals, bloggers, and literary organizations.• Advance review copies on Edelweiss.• Coop available.• Virtual launch readings with recent partners, such as Grolier Poetry Bookshop (Cambridge), Yu and Me Books (NYC), Prairie Lights Books (Iowa City), Miami Book Festival, Rain Taxi Review (Minneapolis).• Review and feature article campaign to select poetry, and Asian and Chinese academic publications.• Featured title at AWP, Boston Book Fair, Brooklyn Book Festival, ALTA, Tucson Festival of Books.• Email marketing to creative writing, Chinese, Asian Studies departments for course adoption.• Social media campaigns on FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, and e-blasts to Zephyr's customer list of 1,500 names.• Will submit to PEN Poetry in Translation Award, Griffin International Poetry Prize, National Translation Award, Derek Walcott Poetry Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, Patrick D. Hanan Award, Harold Morton Landon Award, and others.

Long Description

In these self-mocking poems -- populated with youths and elders, cellphones and televisions -- Jiang Tao presents and dissects a discontent with the state of the world. The complex use of metaphor highlights his profound wit and poetic mastery, building subtle layers of satire that act as commentary and proposed remedy for society's flaws. But melancholy, nostalgia, dispassion, and the occasional lyricism also come into play as he explores the passage of time, city life, materialism, economic realities, and the difficulties of human communication and connection. Jiang Tao's verse is, as translator Josh Stenberg has written, "a quintessential expression of urban malaise in contemporary China."

Feature

* Brings an important poet of Mainland China to English readers for the first time; * Bilingual (Chinese and English) on facing pages; * Josh Stenberg's most recent book, Kunqu Masters on Chinese Theatrical Performance (September, 2022), will be marketed just a few months before the publication of For a Splendid Sunny Apocalypse; * Stenberg's previous book, Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display (2019), won the 2020 Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) Early Career Book Prize; * Stenberg translated into English the first book of stories by best-selling Chinese author Su Tong, author of Raise the Red Lantern , the film version of which was nominated for an Oscar; * Zephyr's Chinese poetry titles have won or been short-listed for the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Award, the National Translation Award, the Griffin International Poetry Prize, the PEN Poetry in Translation Award, and the Northern California Book Award.

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