With Spittoon Finally Able to Hold Events Again, Here’s a Little Bit of Background on the Literary Group

A Backgrounder on Spittoon, Beijing's Literary Supergroup

Katie Coy, Managing Editor | Jul 14, 2022 2:30 pm | Add a comment | 214 reads

Literary fans of Beijing, it is time to celebrate! Spittoon is back with their first live reading event since Beijing’s semi-lockdown put an end to all things deemed fun. Tonight (Jul 14) is Fiction Night, hosted by Beijinger contributor Ana Padilla Fornieles, which will take place at 8pm at Camera Stylo.

Last week already saw the return of Spittoon to Camera Stylo with Spittoon Book Club, the first with new leader Sean Toland. However, Fiction Night will be the first event with readers and an audience since restaurants and bars were forced to close at the start of May. For anyone who has missed live events these past few months, then there is no better place to be tonight!

Here at the Beijinger we have covered various Spittoon events and happenings ever since they were founded back in 2015, but for those who are less familiar with the group here’s a brief introduction to its history and how you can get involved.

Started by poet Matthew Byrne, Spittoon Collective was born with the goal of bringing both foreign and Chinese writers, artists and literary fans together. Starting off as a Beijing-based group it has now not only expanded to other parts of China, with a Spittoon Chengdu and Spittoon Shanghai, but also across continents to Europe, America and beyond.

In fact back in April they did a cross time zone virtual event entitled Spittoon Meridians which saw poets from across the world reading in different time zones online, to create a truly global event. Year on year Spittoon add more events, series and other initiatives to their name so what exactly are all the different things they do?

Here in Beijing they put on events every Thursday, the first Thursday of the month is Book Club, the second is Fiction Night, the third is Storytelling and the fourth is Poetry Night. Along with this there are also special events such as Spit-Tunes which sees poets paired up with musicians to create collaborative pieces based on the poet’s work. There are also a variety of regular events in Chengdu and Shanghai such as book club, poetry and fiction nights.

Besides events, there is also Spittoon Literary Magazine, a bilingual print publication, which recently also became available for free online via the website www.spittoonlitmag.com. They also have an online poetry and fiction series called Spittoon Monthly where writers and poets can submit pieces from or about Asia for publication,you can click here to find out more. Another recent initiative set up by Spittoon is Spittoon-U which aims to build connections between universities and Spittoon in order to encourage university students to become involved in the collective.

Having already been running for seven years, though as of yet unable to celebrate its birthday which fell in May, it’s exciting to see what Spittoon will continue to bring to the capital over future years. But for now, get yourself down to Camera Stylo tonight for some great fiction and give both Spittoon and Camera Stylo -- which was forced to close entirely for the last two months -- your support!