This Friday -- hey, tonight actually -- The Bookworm launches their yearly literary sock-hop -- the Bookworm Literary Festival -- with sundry writers, authors, thinkers, poets, and charlatans descending on our nation's capital to talk about important things and sip drinks for the next few weeks. Just the facts: the line-up is here. Lots of edifying stuff on that document. Tickets are for sale at the venue. In fervid anticipation of this wondrous event, SmartBeijing sat down with Literary Festival Coordinator, Anthony Tao. You might recognize The Tao as the webmaster of one BeijingCream.com, a website erstwhile dedicated to gripping the internet in two hands, flipping it upside-down, and shaking it till all sorts of awful shit fell out. The Cream has slowed down a bit as of late and smartened up a bit content-wise, and Anthony himself is exploring the creative side of his writing, becoming active in Beijing's poetry community. Read on for The Tao on the Literary Festival, poetry and poetics in Beijing, and a lil' peak under the congealed skin of BeijingCream.com. ***

I'm the festival coordinator.

No, no, I'm just a piece in the machine.

I came on later. So, my colleagues had already selected most of the authors -- really great ones by the way -- and I put a couple of panels together. But it's mainly writing the press material -- event descriptions and profiles -- and organizing the events. This is my first year coordinating, but I also did a couple events last year.

That's right. Hey, you did your research! I'm impressed.

Yeah, the blogging thing was a lot of fun. Goldcorn, Mia Li, Alec Ash, Tao Stein…

[Laughs.] Kingpins and wildcards. Yeah, and the poetry was great as well, so we're bringing it back.

Well, I think it's the most interesting line-up we've ever had. Really. Do you want me to go down this road and discuss it?

So we have two of the biggest French-language writers in the world coming in -- Yasmina Khandra and Tahar Ben Jelloun. We have Willis Barnstone, an 87 year old poet -- a four-time Pulitzer-nominated poet. We have Chang-Rae Lee, who is actually coming in directly from an award ceremony in which his book might win a National Book Critic Circle award. We have Victoria Hislop, a writer who probably outsells all of them. [Laughs.] Is that a good thing?

So, those are just the headliners. There's lots more -- Michael Meyer, Rawi Hage, Sheng Keyi, who had a book banned in Mainland China…

Yeah, it's a big wish-list of writers, basically, and we cross that with who's been doing the circuit, who has new books out in the last year or so, which writers might have a China connection, and which writers might happen to be in China at the time of the festival. That's how we were able to get Khadra, I think. I think it's a connection with the Francophone festival there. But yeah, it's just reaching out to people and seeing who's interested. Sometimes we go through agents, sometimes it other connections. I've been told some are nicer than others…

Well, some are pretty big. Some are like NBA players, right…

[Ponderous sigh.]

Yeah, sure. There's one that sounds like fun in particular: "Inside the Laowai Actors Studio" . It's on the last day and features a few names you'd probably recognize. Jonathon Kos-Read. AKA Cao Cao. Jim Bennett.

Kerry Brogan, who I just learned was recently dubbed "the hottest Western face in China".

That panel is going to be moderated by Graham Earnshaw…

…long-time publisher, tough-as-nails journalist. Man of many hats. But, yeah, should be an uproarious panel discussion on being a foreign actor in China. Sort of peeling back the curtain of the Chinese film industry. Hopefully, there will be some fun anecdotes. Bennet just came back from filming Dragon Blade with Jackie Chan and John Cusack.

It is. Surely. But that's a good story. It's a great story. And we're hoping he'll share it.

Other events being overlooked… well, my poetry event might be overlooked.

Yeah, it is poetry. People seem to be more into the journalism and non-fiction stuff. Let's just say Fenby sold out in three days. [Jonathan Fenby discussing Xi Jinping: The Road Ahead]. People know Michael Meyer's name. That's doing well…

[Laughs.] And we have a lot of poetry too. Five poetry events. Which is great for poetry. No, but actually, across the board, everything has been selling really well. As we've said before in various places, there's something for everybody.

Well, we have a trivia night. We should do beer pong though.

Well… hard to say. Last year they pulled in our GM Peter into the PSB and went over the program with him, page by page, the entire brochure…

Sure, yeah, as so many things are. But we use common China sense. It hasn't really come up.

Actually, Peter was joking today, we sold out one of the events. There's a few seat for VIPs but there's no room for the authorities who might monitor the event, so they can't come in anyways. But, no, with this year there's just one that might be a little tricky. But it's on the first day, so we get that one out of the way and it should be fine.

Yeah.

[Laughs.] Yeah, it could. We need strong microphone people to take that platform away. But yeah, it happens.

Yes, I'm co-hosting that one with Liz Richards, who hosts the monthly "Word of Mouth" open mic sessions. This year, we tried to get people who have given back to the Beijing arts community. One of my selections is Kassey Lee, who founded an arts platform called Transmigrant Flow. She's great. Published poet. We also have Edward Ragg, who has his second book coming out. Liz chose Vanessa Meng, who is the reigning Beijing International High School slam poetry champion. She also chose Anna Yates, who represents Scratching Beijing, and this guy called Elijah Grantham, who is as unique a poet as I've heard. The diversity alone in this event should be a draw. I should also mention we're being joined by Zohab Zee Khan — the current Australian Slam Poetry champion — and Maxine Beneba Clarke, a writer of Afro-Caribbean descent. So there's some academic stuff, there's some not academic stuff, and there's some straddling of the line there as well.

Oh, I don't know.

[Laughs.] Sure. Actually. I was reading this one book. Ants on the Melon by Virginia Hamilton Adair, and that sort of opened my eyes to the possibilities of modern poetry. You know, in school, you study all the dead poets…

Morgan…

But contemporary poets speak to you, I find. It's a generational thing. I'm sure Keats spoke to his generation. But for me it was Adair and then just going from there. Billy Collins Philip Levine. People I run across on Amazon on wherever.

There's definitely platforms. Word of Mouth is a good one. Scratching Beijing. You know how these things work. If you want to do something you have to do it yourself. And Beijing has people doing that. This is speaking to the expat side of things, but we're lucky enough that there's a good amount of expats here who are doing things.

That's one of the downsides. In Beijing, everyone is sort of all over the place, and you don't have that thing that you might in the States or wherever, where you're working with someone who specifically does what you do and you improve that way. People are on different levels and coming from different viewpoints. It's more spread out. It's more scattered. And there's nothing unusual about that. But it's the situation. But we're all distilling our experiences the best we can…

Well, I've just been busy with other things. I was doing it full-time before because I was making money off a copy editing job, working only two days a week. So I had the time to do it. But also that scene got really saturated.

Not just them. But newcomers as well. Yeah, it kind of sucks to see something you've worked on for an hour get taken away from you by someone else with more followers on twitter or whatever. Anyway. Content remains king. And these days I don't want to aggregate just for the sake of driving traffic. Obviously, it's the toughest to produce your own stuff. And I was never willing to risk my health to try shitty hamburgers…

It's a good idea.

We gave out paper plate awards the first year. I gave a paper plate to Carl of Great Leap "Best Hipster Hangout".

Nothing serious… Yeah, nothing serious.

I love him. I think he's great.

I've never met him. I've been meaning to email him. He takes seasons off from the comics. I've been meaning to email him to let me know in advance of when he's coming back, and then I can write an "In Defense of Laowai Comics" thing.

I think sometimes people don't understand the perspective he's coming from. Not everything is on-point, but I like that he's mocking foreigners. I like that. You have to understand that, I think, to appreciate it.

Well. Rob's thing on CDE is great, right. That was an important moment in the history of the blog. Rob's good at that kind of thing. Posts I'm proud of... I don't know, I'd have to think about it. The thing about writing a blog is you reset your memory every day.

[Laugh.]

[Lost in thought.]

You should have emailed this one.

Milton. Shakespeare.

Whoever wrote the bible. And Cormack McCarthy.

Oh, I should have had female representation there.

Gary…

Oh right.

We got it. *** Full details on the Bookwork Literary Festival right here.