The good news: Liu Xiaobo’s writing will be published in English. The bad news: not till 2012.

Some time ago, I wrote that it was unfortunate that we had no access to the writings of this year’s imprisoned Nobel peace prize winner, Liu Xiaobo.  All writers, after all, would rather be known for their writings rather than their persecution.

Now it’s official that the prestigious Graywolf Press will be publishing a bilingual edition of the Chinese writer’s June Fourth Elegies.  The book will be out in 2012.  The title of his book, which of course has not come out in China, refers to the June 4, 1989, suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square.

From Galleycat, we also learn that poet Jeffrey Yang will translate the collection. Literary agent Peter Bernstein negotiated the deal with Jeffrey Shotts and publisher Fiona McCrae.

That’s not all.  Harvard University Press (also prestigious) will publish a selection of works by the Chinese dissident, also next year.  The untitled anthology will contain poetry, essays, and social commentary.

The academic press has enlisted UC-Riverside’s  Perry Link to direct a translation team. Said Link: “Until he won the Nobel Peace Prize, Liu Xiaobo was little known in the West. This collection offers to the reader of English the full range of his astute and penetrating analyses of culture, politics, and society in China today.”

Author: Cynthia Haven

Cynthia Haven has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and other publications. Her work has also appeared in Le Monde, La Repubblica, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly Conversation, The Georgia Review, Civilization, and others. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven was published in London, 2005. Her Czestaw Mitosz: Conversations was published in 2006; Joseph Brodsky: Conversations in 2003; An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czestaw Mitosz was published in 2011 with Ohio University Press / Swallow Press. She is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. Her biography René Girard, A Life will be published next year. Join me at twitter: @chaven View all posts by Cynthia Haven