Pictured left to right: Maya Peak ‘25, Juli Min, Sidney Brown ‘26, and Zhou Sivan.
By Rebecca Combs
On September 22nd, 2024, the HRC welcomed authors Juli Min and Zhou Sivan, along with Migratory Ghost DKU student winners Maya Peak ‘25 and Sidney Brown ‘26, to read their award-winning works in an immersive session. About 20 students and 8 faculty members attended.
The event began with the announcement of both student winners: Maya Peak, Class of 2025 Global Cultural Studies – Literature Track Major, and Sidney Brown, Class of 2026 Global Cultural Studies – Literature Track Major. This was promptly followed by each of them reading their submitted work to the attendees.
First, Maya read her short story titled Metamorphoses: Homunculus, a frankenstein-esque telling of a scientist, their life-given experiment, the gruesome steps of the process, and the emotionally painful reality of their creation having autonomy: “it’s a whole person who treats me like a mystery for not knowing what it is”.
Next, Sidney read her four poetry pieces titled “I Believe I Can Fly”, “Lost at Sea”, “Tempest”, and “The Great Escape”. Each explored the complexities of negative emotions and captured themes of transformation, change, and letting go: “for this moment I am airborne, looking down at this swath of land and empty bodies limping with their strings sewn up”. (“I Believe I Can Fly”)
Following the student winners, Shanghai-based Korean-American author and Harvard University graduate Juli Min read a section of her book Shanghailanders. Published in May of this year, Min’s work of fiction covers Shanghai cosmopolitans told backwards in time. In light of the theme of migratory ghosts, New York Times reviewer Jean Kwok states: “having knowledge of these characters’ futures before we know about their past makes stumbling on their bygone days all the more touching”.
Finally, Hong-Kong-based Malaysian poet and author Zhou Sivan read from his book of poems “The Geometry of Trees”. Published in 2022, Sivan details themes of queer desire through the trees, their trunks, and language, revealing how their growth has stayed with him throughout his entire life. Much like the lurking nature of ghosts, Sivan emphasizes how “in the background, trees dramatize the architectural displays of empire”.
Faculty, authors, and student-winners were treated to a dinner. The event was a complete success, student and faculty attendees alike having been immersed in prose which illuminated the starkly different facets of migratory ghosts–whether fear, folklore, our pasts, or periods of transition and change.
Report by Rebecca Combs, class of 2025 & Photos by Ruixiang Hu, Class of 2027
How can we experience poetry? We can read it, we can write it—and if we’re lucky enough to know more than one language, we can translate it! Down through the ages, translating poetry has been a vital source of inspiration for poets and writers, challenging our creativity to convey those messages that seem the most untranslatable. It can also spark some of the most fascinating conversations between speakers of different languages, and lead us to discover things about our own language that we did not know. Join Chinese-English poetry translator Austin Woerner for a hands-on workshop in poetry translation, where we will discover poetry is not just what is lost in translation—it is what is found in it, as well.