These dudes, HAL, an indie publishing house / writers collective, are hosting a poetry slam this Wednesday -- SLAMHAI -- showcasing a cavalcade of local literary types spitting ill shiz and dropping mad rhymes, competing for lovely prizes and audience reverence. That's wassup.

Apart from Wednesday's throw-down, the folks at HAL host ongoing writers' workshops. They also feature local writers on their website right here. If you like book-readin' and writin', you should get down with them, mailing list styles, or even face to face.

SmartShanghai talked to Nathan Fischbacher, one of the founders, about HAL publishing projects, being just 'post' it all, and poetry slammin'.

Bash out the event listing right here. In addition to several rounds of poetry competitions is Ho-Tom the Conqueror singing about how modern life is rubbish, DJ Ben Thriller, and cheap booze.

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Nathan: HAL is a start-up publishing house putting out exceptional works by China-based authors. HAL is Nathan and Bjorn with the help of friends, authors, and artists we collaborate with. We started out as a two-man writers' circle in 2009 and we'll be putting out our first book this year.


Nathan: Our first major publishing project is party like it's 1984: short stories from the people's republic of. It's a collection of short stories by China-based authors, local and 'post-pat' alike, which is in the final stages of typesetting and headed to the printers soon. It's going to be very different from most of the China-lit that's out there. You'll start seeing it around in late October / early November after the launch.

Our future projects consist of works from authors we met while compiling party like it's 1984. We've got a post-apocalyptic Shanghai sci-fi epic in the works, a poetry collection, a city hopping China murder mystery, and some other stuff we're not ready to reveal just yet. We've been inundated with great manuscripts since we started out and we can't wait to get some of them published. First things first though and that's party like it's 1984.


Nathan: We're loathe to contribute to semantic debates about how to define foreigners in China, which is ironic because that's exactly what we're doing with 'post-pat', but believe it or not there are lots of laowai for whom life in China has become the norm. It's day-to-day, it's mundane, in other words, it's home. It's hard to imagine describing a Chinese guy struggling to pay the rent between two jobs in New York as an 'expat'. Semantically things haven't reached that point in China yet, but they will.

'Post-pat' springs from our vision of writings that come from a perspective where China is the scenery, not the subject.


Nathan: Creative fiction and poetry are our main interests and fortunately that's what we see most of. That and a lot of embellished non-fiction. We get the occasional 'chinarant' masquerading as soul-searching narrative which we usually direct here. Our writers' workshops go by the name of 'Groupthink'. We have a great mix of locals and expats, seasoned professional writers, and total amateurs. The atmosphere is very open-minded and positive. We get a lot people who haven't picked up the pen since high school, and are rediscovering a passion and talent. That's always interesting to see.


Nathan: Publish. Words on paper.




Nathan: Slamhai is HAL's poetry slam. It's an evening-long event featuring awesome poetry, live music, DJ Ben Thriller and CHEAP DRINKS CHEAP DRINKS CHEAP DRINKS....ahem...basically poets compete through three rounds of poetry readings, including their own original material, readings of works by famous authors and original poetry from audience suggestions.

Winners are chosen by the audience and there are fabulous prizes to be won, mostly booze related because as everybody knows authors are lushes, and since HAL is an official organization we can't award party drugs, as much as we'd like to. Ho-Tom the Conqueror will be performing live in between rounds and DJ Ben Thriller will be rockin' the turntables till the early AM after the slam. It's going to be an awesome night.


Nathan: Last minute entries might be accepted if you're an awesome poet. Send us an email and we'll decide: editor@haliterature.com


Nathan: Don't miss SLAMHAI. It's going to be a fun night for literati and iliterati alike. If you're interested in attending our Groupthink writers' meetings drop us an email at editor@haliterature.com and we'll put you on the mailing list.

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HAL hosts SLAMHAI this Wednesday.

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