The team at Tilted Axis want to thank all of our readers for your support. If it wasn’t for all of your bookclubs, bookstagram posts and encouraging emails to the team, we wouldn’t have had half as much wind in our sails. Here’s a little journey through our titles of 2020 to help shine a light on the excellent people that we got to work with and publish this year.
We started this year with a landmark dual collection by Itō Hiromi, translated by Jeffrey Angles: KILLING KANOKO / WILD GRASS ON THE RIVERBANK. From human-plant hybrids to cyclings of 'consumption and secretion', Itō's poetry is radical, feminist and sensual. We then published WHERE THE WILD LADIES ARE by Matsudo Aoko, in a translation by Polly Barton: ghostly vignettes updating traditional Japanese folk tales for our contemporary world.
A plump chicken then popped up to model on the cover of ARID DREAMS, a collection of Thai short stories by Duanwad Pimwana, translated by Mui Poopoksakul - described by Irenosen Okojie as 'full of subtle power'. In August we published UNEXPECTED VANILLA by Lee Hyemi, lush dream-like poetry in an equally sensuous and sensitive queer translation by Soje. NO PRESENTS PLEASE: MUMBAI STORIES showed us another side of city life, exploring the sub-locales and spatial identities of Mumbai, a vivid collection of short stories by Jayant Kaikini, translated by Tejaswini Niranjana. WOMEN DREAMING by Salma, translated by Meena Kandasamy brought the voices of women in a tiny Muslim village in Tamil Nadu to the forefront - described as 'both tactile and deeply felt'.
We're also so grateful for the support we received from you all for funding intimate collaborations between some of Asia's most exciting women and nonbinary writers in the form of #TranslatingFeminisms 2! PA-LIWANAG (To the Light) curated by the amazing feminist stars @gantalapress is a collection of poems and prose by Filipinas in the Philippines and abroad. We published this alongside DEVIANT DISCIPLES - edited by Intan Paramaditha - featuring five prominent Indonesian women poets of different generations and cultural backgrounds.
Which leads us onto our final title of the year: STRANGE BEASTS OF CHINA by Yan Ge, in a bold translation by Jeremy Tiang. This early work by literary boss Yan Ge feels both unsettlingly relevant and yet something altogether fantastic, a bestiary of sorts that uncovers the stories of the beasts of Yong'an City.
We're so appreciative to all of our readers for supporting us this year, and grateful this community has allowed us to share such key voices. Thank you so much.