Writers & Stories | Jack Hargreaves
About "Writers & Stories"
Every writer has a story that’s close to their heart. In our new Craftclass series, Writers & Stories, we invite a writer each month to share their thoughts and feelings about a story of their choice and lead an intimate, insightful conversation around it. This 90-minute class will cover the writer’s personal experience of the story, why it sticks in their head, and where its power to move, provoke, and change our minds comes from. You’ll walk away with not just one more good story but also a special memory of engaging with it with love, care, and wisdom.
This time, we are delighted to have literary translator Jack Hargreaves to share his favorite story with us.
Jack has picked this story for discussion: The Novelist in the Attic by Shen Dacheng.
About Shen Dacheng & The Novelist in the Attic:
Writers writing about writers, as a genre, draws mixed reactions, from eyerolls to intense interest. With “The Novelist in the Attic”, Shen Dacheng finds a novel way to interrogate the sacrificial beauty and violence of artmaking and becoming, with an unassuming premise that takes a guignol turn. Recent Chinese literature is a wealth of similar explorations into what it means to give something of oneself to the act of creation. We’ll look at a few examples in this class and talk about the layers of translation – of self and text – involved in the process of reading and writing.
Shen Dacheng is a columnist, story writer, and editor. She takes her pen name from a popular pastry shop in Shanghai. Her stories, which she first publishes in a column called “Strange People,” have been collected into three books: The Ones in Remembrance, Asteroids in the Afternoon, and The Lost Ones.
Main reading (English translations by Jack Hargreaves):
The Novelist in the Attic by Shen Dacheng
Bonus readings (English translations by Jack Hargreaves):
A Neutral Affair by Shen Dacheng
She by the Seashore by Shen Dacheng
A Cloudcutters' Diary by Chen Chuncheng
Submarine in the Night by Chen Chuncheng
Other Shen Dacheng stories: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/shen_04_24/ https://www.spittoonlitmag.com/shen-dacheng
About Jack Hargreaves:
Jack Hargreaves is a translator of Yorkshire extraction. His literary work, recognised by English PEN and PEN/Heim, has appeared on adda, Arts of the Working Class, Asymptote Journal, Granta, LitHub, The Southern Review, Samovar, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. Published and forthcoming full-length works include Winter Pasture by Li Juan and Seeing by Chai Jing, both co-translated with Yan Yan (Astra House); Reimagining Nanyang by Chia Joo Ming (Ethos Books, 2025); I Deliver Parcels in Beijing by Hu Anyan (Allen Lane/Astra House, 2025), and The Man Under Water by Xiaoyu Lu (Honford Star, 2026). Jack has taught translation at the universities of Leeds and Aberdeen, SOAS and Hong Kong Baptist University, and writes for the China Books Review.
Register to embark on this intimate journey with us.