The Association of Stories in Macao (ASM) will launch 13 new books, covering a range of categories, including contemporary and classical poetry, poetry translation, short fiction and life writing, which are written by Prof. Kit Kelen, associate professor of the Department of English of the University of Macau (UM) and students from the Department of English of UM , at a ceremony organized by Creative Macau (CCI) at the Macao Cultural Centre this coming Saturday (18 December). Prof.Leung Ping Kwan, a famous Hong Kong poet and the Lingnan University Comparative Literature Chair, will be the guest of honour at the launch.

The centrepiece of this year’s launch is a second volume of twenty Australian poets, presented in parallel text, in English and Chinese, such as “Wombats of Bundanon — 20 Australian Poets” – to be launched by Gavin McDougal, the Director of Public Affairs at Australia’s Hong Kong Consulate. This anthology is the product of a poetry translation workshop retreat at Bundanon in New South Wales, conducted in July 2010 and involving Chinese poet translators Chris Song Zijiang, Iris Fan Xing, both of whom are graduate students in the Department of English and Debby Sou Vai Keng. The Australian poets published in this volume are Chris Wallace-Crabbe, John Bennett, Andy Kissane, Martin Langford, Ron Pretty, John Mateer, Clive Ralfe, Rae Desmond Jones, Beth Spencer, Carol Jenkins, Philip Salom, James Stuart, Myron Lysenko, Pam Brown, Adam Aitken, Anna Couani, Chris Mansell, John Tranter, Les Wicks and S.K. Kelen.

Other books to be launched this Saturday include prose such as “Siblings” , a book of stories by Cecilia Cheong Sai Long , “Macao Stories – A Book of Life Writing", contemporary poets series like Leung Ping Kwan’ “amblings”, Prof. Kit Kelen's “China years – new and selected poems”, the Chinese version is translated by Iris Fan Xing, Yao Feng's “ in brief” , Chris Song Zijiang's “strolling”,which is the first book length volume of poems written by him, Richard Stanley-Baker's “dreaming time”, co-published with VAC in Chicago, and “birthplace – ten poets from Guangdong” and classical poets series like Yu Xuanji’s “ hard to find a loving man”, Li Qingzhao “spring hides in the little room”, “the peacock flies south-east “, an anthology of Han Dynasty poetry and “
shadows of flowers fall across shutters”,an anthology of Yuan Dynasty poetry.

Established in 2005, ASM is a non-profit government-registered community organisation dedicated to the promotion of writing and other artistic expression from and about Macao. Up until now, ASM has published 50 books, including poetry, novels, stories for children, teaching guides and much classical poetry in translation. ASM has published first books of poetry or fiction by many young Macao authors.
ASM thanks the Macao Foundation, the Macao Institute of Culture and the Henry Fok Foundation for their generous and ongoing support of ASM publications.
For the funding which made “Wombats of Bundanon” possible, ASM thanks the Bundanon Trust, the Australia-China Council and Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Copyright Agency Limited and Macao Rotary. Thanks also to the Macao Foundation for funding the publication of the anthology.

At the launch ceremony there will also feature the award of the ASM Creative Writing Prize for 2010. The ceremony will kick off at 4:30 pm at CCI and will be open to the public. All are welcome.

For further information or any inquiries, please contact Pro. Kit Kelen at (853) 8397 8251 or by email at kitkelen@um.edu.mo.