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Long-listed for the 2017 Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, Empire of Glass is a grand, experimental epic chronicling the seismic changes in China over the last half century.In the mid-1990s, an American teenager, named Lao K in Chinese, stands on Coal Hill, a park in Beijing, a loop of rope in her hand. Will she assist her Chinese homestay mother, Li-Ming, who is dying of cancer, in ending her life, or will she choose another path? Twenty years later, Lao K receives a book written by Li-Ming called "Empire of Glass," a narrative that chronicles the lives of Li-Ming and her husband, Wang, in pre and post-revolutionary China over the last half of the twentieth century. Lao K begins translating the story, which becomes the novel we are reading. But, as translator, how can Lao K separate fact from fiction, and what will her role be in the book's final chapter?A grand, experimental epic--Lao K's story is told in footnotes that run throughout the book--that chronicles the seismic changes in China over the last half century through the lens of one family's experiences, Empire of Glass is an investigation into the workings of human memory and the veracity of oral history that pushes the boundaries of language and form in stunning and unforgettable ways.Kaitlin Solimine has been a Fulbright Fellow in China, and has received several scholarships, awards, and residencies for her writing, including the 2012 Dzanc Books/Disquiet International Literary Program award for an earlier draft of Empire of Glass, judged by Colson Whitehead. Her fiction has been published in Guernica, Kartika Review, and numerous anthologies. Kaitlin is co-founder of Hippo Reads, a network connecting academic insights and scholars to the wider public. She resides in San Francisco with her husband and daughter, where she was a 2016 SF Grotto Writing Fellow and is associate producer of the childbirth documentary, Of Woman Born.



About the Author

Kaitlin Solimine

Kaitlin Solimine holds a BA from Harvard University and an MA from the University of Southern California, both in East Asian Studies with an emphasis on Chinese language, culture, and history. She studied international relations at Beijing University as a Harvard-Yenching Scholar, wrote and edited the travel series, Let's Go: China (St. Martin's Press) , and received a Fulbright creative grant to research her forthcoming first novel, Empire of Glass. At the 2010 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, she was the Donald E. Axinn Scholar in Fiction. She received an MFA in writing from UC-San Diego, where she also taught undergraduate writing. An excerpt from Empire of Glass won the 2012 Dzanc Books/Disquiet International Literary Program award, judged by Colson Whitehead. Another excerpt, 'Thoughts of Sinking,' is featured in Kartika Review. She is a Huffington Post contributor and columnist at The World of Chinese Magazine. She co-founded HIPPO Reads, a literary startup focused on curating and delivering high quality, previously published content with an academic bent. After recently living in Singapore, she moved to San Francisco where she was a 2016 SF Grotto Writing Fellow. Empire of Glass is her first novel.



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