Lake Like a Mirror at The Ruby SF: Ho Sok Fong and Natascha Bruce in conversation with Meng Jin
The Ruby SF | San Francisco, CA
This event has been canceled.
Celebrate the release of Ho Sok Fong’s Lake Like a Mirror, translated by Natascha Bruce, at The Ruby SF, an arts and letters-focused work and gathering space for creative Bay Area women of all definitions. Ho Sok Fong and Natascha Bruce will be in conversation with writer Meng Jin.
By an author described by critics as “the most accomplished Malaysian writer, full stop,” Lake Like a Mirror is a scintillating exploration of the lives of women buffeted by powers beyond their control. Squeezing themselves between the gaps of rabid urbanization, patriarchal structures and a theocratic government, these women find their lives twisted in disturbing ways.
In precise and disquieting prose, Ho Sok Fong draws her readers into a richly atmospheric world of naked sleepwalkers in a rehabilitation center for wayward Muslims, mysterious wooden boxes, gossip in unlicensed hair salons, hotels with amnesiac guests, and poetry classes with accidentally charged politics—a world that is peopled with the ghosts of unsaid words, unmanaged desires and uncertain statuses, surreal and utterly true.
Light reception at 6:00. Conversation begins at 6:30.
Ho Sok Fong is the author of the short story collections Lake Like a Mirror (Two Lines Press) and Maze Carpet. Her literary awards include the Chiu Ko Fiction Prize (2015), the 25th China Times Short Story Prize, and the 30th United Press Short Story Prize. She has a PhD in Chinese Language & Literature from NTU Singapore, and lives in Malaysia.
Natascha Bruce translates fiction from Chinese. Her work includes Lonely Face by Yeng Pway Ngon, Bloodline by Patigül, Lake Like a Mirror by Ho Sok Fong, and Mystery Train by Can Xue. Her translation of Dorothy Tse’s poem “Cloth Birds” was a winner of the 2019 Words Without Borders Poems in Translation Prize.
Meng Jin writes sentences that sometimes become paragraphs that once became a book called Little Gods. She lives in San Francisco with her partner Neel and her puppy Tofu.