URBAN FRAGMENTS
Bios
Ana Padilla Fornieles is a literary translator, writer and self-taught artist from Spain. As a millennial Gemini, she’s intrinsically designed to engage in one project too many while navigating her beloved Beijing. Her prose, poetry and comics have been featured in The Shanghai Literary Review, Womankind, Voice & 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.
Chris Nash works for a Chinese education company where he is developing a progressive international education curriculum based on traditional Chinese values such as harmony. He writes international ‘poetry without borders’ and has published a collection called ‘Songs of the Silk Road’. Chris is from the mythical area of Wessex in south-west England. A silk road once joined Wessex to Xi’an, then Chang’an, the City of Peace. Along the road cultures contested and coupled, joining in new lives, new thoughts, new words. It is a metaphor for ‘connectedness’ - the concrete material road, the organic sensual spirit of silk. There are silk roads waiting to be built everywhere. He is now working on a collection of ‘songs’ for species at threat of extinction called ‘Is this Goodbye?’. More work at ‘chrisnashpoetry.com’.
David Huntington is managing web editor at SpittoonCollective.com. His work is published or forthcoming in the likes of Literary Hub, Literary Shanghai, and Post Road; his screenplay 'New Violence' was selected for the 2018 Middlebury Script Lab.
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 with 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 (MW).
Jenny Rowe currently teaches high school English Language Arts at Tsinghua International School in the Haidian district of Beijing. Outside of work, you can usually find her in any of Spittoon’s outlets, such as the bi-weekly poetry workshop, the monthly book club, and the monthly reading nights for both poetry and fiction. She is also an active member of the Beijing Writers’ Network (which is supported by the Spittoon Collective) and just last month tried NaNoWriMo for the first time with a great bunch of local writers. She feels her newest role as Spittoon Literary Magazine’s Marketing & Sales Director is an ideal opportunity to serve and expand the community that has given her a sense of home in this megacity.
Jonathan B. Chan is a university student and occasional poet. Born to a Malaysian father and Korean mother in the United States, he was raised in Singapore and is based in the United Kingdom. He currently reads English at Cambridge University. He is interested in questions of identity, human expression, and the intersection of art and faith. He has recently been moved by the writing of R. S. Thomas, Wang Gungwu, and Dani Gurira.
Before moving back to his home country, China, Julian spent his teenage years in Melbourne and received his college education in Paris. In 2015, Julian started playing music as a part-time DJ in Lantern, one of the pioneering techno club in Beijing. A year later, he decided to devote himself into his music career, so he quitted his daytime office job in Beijing and began the study on music production in Dub Spot Electronic Music School in New York. He also taught himself film scoring during that time.
Julian’s earlier inter-cultural background and his residency in the artistic Williamsburg neighborhood has granted his work with great complexity. He also drew great amount of inspirations from his own life stories, which makes some of his music very cinematic, even with a story-telling style. Most of his works are experimental, yet Julian would add a bit witty and humorous element in them. His music could not be defined as a certain genre. Sampling, electro, techno, and orchestral has all became ingredients in his personal, visionary and original musical delicacy.
In 2018, Julian came back to Beijing and launched his career as a freelance music producer. He has been collaborating with poets, artists and fashion designers. Julian also provided ambient music and sound system solutions for business properties. He will never cease the exploration in the realm of music and sound.
Lebogang Lebese or Lebo as he is better known is a South African poet, teacher, student. Currently residing in the BEIJING, more or less a recent graduate from the University of Pretoria, co-founder of Soul Ink and ScribeRites initiative. He likes to think he writes things that are honest. He is one of his mother's great achievements and his ancestors wildest dreams. When not hiding away in a library or book shop, he can be found like all other Laowai nestled in the embrace of a beer somewhere down a Hutong.
Michael is from Lancashire in the UK but has been living in Beijing for close to five years. He writes poetry in his free time in Beijing and has participated in Beijing Spittoon events such as the poetry workshop and poetry slam.
Nancy really loves to write—that’s about it. Someone once asked her the question: “Is there anything about who you are today that would make your 8 year-old self cry?” The answer: she’d stopped writing.
Nina Dillenz graduated with a Master of Arts from the University of Vienna in Theatre and Film Studies. Recent artistic projects include creating visuals for German painter Crow’s performance “Unleashed”, "The Last Tribe on Earth" by Anthony Tao (writing) and Liane Halton (music) for the Beijing Bookworm Literary Festival 2019, “Subway Stops” with poet Sara F. Costa for Spittoon, for bimonthly techno event Blackout at Lantern Club Beijing and several Beijing-based bands.
Her visuals are characterized by layers of abstract, stock and found footage interspersed with elements from nature. She has been the dramaturg and designed stage projections for scenic reading “Fire and Water” at Penghao Theatre. She directed two performative video installations at Red Gate Gallery and Aotu Studio, and co-directed “City of Mirrors”, a music video for post rock band Macondo together with Gregorio Soravito. Her writing has appeared on Spittoon and Shaving in the Dark. Her analogue photography has been featured on Supchina and her “Animated Analogues” series was exhibited at the first edition of the Gobi Heaven Festival in August 2019.
Pieter Velghe is a writer, translator and interpreter from Ghent, Belgium who lives in Beijing. When not writing, you can probably find him studying politics, playing guitar or playing board games.
Tara is a freelance writer from London. She has a BA in English Literature from the University of Oxford and an MPhil in Criticism and Culture from the University of Cambridge. Tara has been living in China since September 2018, after spending a year in Beijing she exchanged cityscapes and moved to Shanghai. From the outside, China is so often understood through meaningless buzzwords rather than its people or its streets, Tara’s writing aims to use her experiences over the last year and a half to give China a human face. Her writing has featured in Spittoon and The Times. Earlier this year, Tara hosted a panel discussion on the art of world building at the EU-China International Literary Festival.
Sara F. Costa is a Portuguese writer. She has published five poetry collections in Portugal. Her latest book won the international award “Glória de Sant’Anna” for best poetry book published in Portuguese speaking countries in 2018. She has an MA in Intercultural Studies: Portuguese/Chinese from Tianjin Foreign Studies University. Her verses have been translated into several languages and featured in literary journals all across the world. As an emerging European poet, she was an invited author of the International Istanbul Poetry Festival 2017. In 2018, Sara worked in the organization of The Script Road-Macau Literary Festival and China-European Union Literary Festival in Shanghai and Suzhou. In 2019, she was invited to go to Kolkata, India to share her poetry in the second edition of “Chair Poetry Evenings”. She translates Chinese poetry into Portuguese and is currently living in Beijing coordinating events for the Spittoon Beijing Based Arts Collective while hosting the Spittoon Poetry Workshop.
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, among other publications.
A Writer/Artist/ Director. Master of Film study; Bachelor of English Literature; born in Shandong peninsula in 1980; graduated from Shanghai Film Academy in 2007. Dozens of poems and literary works have been published through literary journals and publishing houses in Hong Kong and the Mainland China since 2003; and has won poetry prizes for many times.
The "Pond" experimental photography series was invited to participate in the 2018 Art Shake Contemporary Art Exhibition, and was invited by "YIPINGTAI" art platform to give an art lecture at the YIYUANTANG Art Museum in Shanghai. Writing many scripts; directing and writing short films "Far Away in Paris"(2018), "Last Dream about Godot", "Qing Ming" and so on, which were officially selected or finalisted by International Film Festivals in England, San Francisco, Denver, Montana, Holland, Italy, Mumbai, Lagos, China etc.
Selected by the 4th Youth Senior Script Writing Master Class of Wu Tianming Youth Special Film Fund of China Film Foundation and got the certificate in 2019; And selected by the Young Filmmakers' Training Program in 2019. Writing and publishing academic papers on film, literature, media academic translations, and interview column on national-level filmmakers through well-known publishing houses and national key film journals such as Shanghai Joint Publishing House, "Film Literature", and "Popular Film".