NEWS

For Immediate Release
Date: November 2, 2011
Contact: Elizabeth L. Hodges

ehodges@stpetersburgreview.com

INAUGURAL ASIAN ARTS & IDEAS FORUM
THE 'CHINDIA' DIALOGUES

November 3 - November 6, 2011
Asia Society
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), NYC

XU XIAOBIN AND TIMOTHY LIU READING
Presented by St. Petersburg Review
Monday, November 7, 2011
General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen
20 West 44th Street, NYC
(Reception to follow)

THE CHINDIA DIALOGUES:

Public talks with Amit Chaudhuri, Siddhartha Deb, Amitav Ghosh, Yu Hua, Zha
Jianying, Ha Jin, Meena Kandasamy,  Amitava Kumar, Suketu Mehta,  Gingger Shankar,
Su Tong, Xu Xiaobin, Murong Xuecun, and others

Performances by Zhang Le, Dave Liang’s The Shanghai Restoration Project, Gingger
Shankar, The Amit Chaudhuri Band, Qian Yi, Du Yun, and others

Through ten public talks and two performances, twenty of China and India's leading creative voices explore the transformative power of literature and the arts to frame the national and global issues that link two of Asia's most populous nations to each other. Presented in conjunction with the Asia Society Museum exhibition, Rabindranath Tagore: The Last Harvest (on view through December 31, 2011),
celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Asia’s first Nobel laureate in
literature. For updates and details, please visit AsiaSociety.org/artsandideas
or call 212-517-ASIA.

The “Chindia” Dialogues are co-sponsored by the Center for U.S.-China Relations, the
Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and the India China Institute at the New School
University in New York. Major Support provided by the National Endowment for the
Arts, Aashish & Dinny Devitre, Mridul Pathak, Erpf Foundation, Weedon Foundation,
Arthur Loeb Foundation, China Energy Fund Committee, and other generous Asia Society
supporters.

XU XIAOBIN AND TIMOTHY LIU READING:

XU XIAOBIN, born in 1953 into an intellectual family in Beijing, studied drawing at an early age, is a member of the China’s Writers Association. She spent nine years in the countryside at a factory during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), until 1978 when she entered the Central University of Finance of China. She began publishing her work in 1981. Currently she is a senior staff screenplay writer at China’s Television Production Center.

She has published more than 40 books including fictions, novellas and collections of prose, and a five-volume of Collected Works of Xu Xiaobin by Huayi Publishing House in 1998 and an eight-volume of Anthology of Xu Xiaobin will be published by the prestigious Writers House in the Fall of 2011. Her novels published in English are: Feathered Serpent (Atria Books 2009), and Duanhuang Dreams (Atria Books 2011).

TIMOTHY LIU is the author of eight books of poems, most recently Bending the Mind
Around the Dream's Blown Fuse. He lives in Manhattan with his husband.

St. Petersburg Review is an annual independent, international review of contemporary literature that seeks to support global connections and affinities through publishing quality fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama from writers of all countries.