We’re so proud and feel extremely lucky to announce the Nepal book launch of Old Demons, New Deities: Twenty-one short stories from Tibet edited by Tenzin Dickie. The event is at 5:30pm, Thursday, June 27, at The Taragaon Museum in Boudha.

Old Demons, New Deities is the first of its kind: a collection of short fiction by Tibetan writers from Tibet, Nepal, India, China, and North America covering over 40 years of Tibetan literature. The writers in this anthology write in Tibetan, English and Chinese; so many of these stories are translated from the original language into English.

For the non-Tibetan audience, these stories give us something beyond the one-dimensional representation of Tibetans in popular culture. They show us a diverse and complex array of authentic Tibetan experiences. The stories feel familiar and new. They feel urgent and important. For the Tibetan readers, as Tenzin Dickie, so beautifully states, “[these stories] do something a great deal more. They examine and explain our heartbreak– the heartbreak of our occupation, our exile, our diaspora– and in doing so, they give us comfort, clarity, and a measure of belonging.”

Join us for an intimate evening of celebrating Tibet in Kathmandu. The editor, Tenzin Dickie, will be in conversation with KathaSatha’s Muna Gurung. There will also be music, poetry by young Tibetans, and momos! We look forward to seeing you there.

This event is jointly organized by KathaSatha and Taragaon Museum.

Tenzin Dickie is a writer, translator and editor. She is an editor at The Treasury of Lives, a biographical encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia and the Himalayan Region. She was an ALTA fellow of the American Literary Translators’ Association and currently a Fulbright fellow in Kathmandu. She holds an MFA in Fiction and Literary Translation from Columbia and a BA in English Literature from Harvard.

All photos by Sagar Chhetri

Posted on 24 June 2019