Cascadia gathers contemporary eco-literature–poetry, prose and oratory–from the bio-region that form an arc from Southeast Alaska to Cape Mendocina, California. The issues includes some of the most distinguished names in the field, such as Gary Snyder, Robert Bringhurst, Wade Davis, Susan Musgrave, Barry Lopez, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Rex Weyler. It also features many of the region’s major indigenous writers: Chief Dan George, Eden Robinson, Lee Maracle, Richard Van Camp, Richard Wagamese, Chief William Sepass, and Louis Owens. Plus, the Northwest art of Emily Carr.

The fall 1992 issue features fiction, poetry, and reviews from Mexico, the US, and a range of international writers, guest-edited by Hernán Lara Zavala and Darlaine Māhealani Dudoit. Included are writers from Pakistan, Cuba, Israel, New Zealand, Austria, and Sweden. A symposium titled “The Rise of Nature Writing: America’s Next Great Genre?” is included, with responses by sixteen nature writers such as Edward Hoagland, Barry Lopez, John Haines, William Kittredge, David Rains Wallace, and Christopher Merrill. Plus woodcuts by Karin Wikstrom.

The summer 1994 issue features post-Tiananmen Square poetry from the People’s Republic of China. In this feature, guest-editor Arthur Sze gathers the poetry of eight major writers, plus interviews with exiled Chinese writers Bei Ling and Xue Di on the political, cultural, and artistic difficulties they have encountered. Other Chinese writers include Nei Ling, Xue Di, Bei Dao, Wang Jiaxin, Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian. There is also an interview with Kenzaburo Oe, and nature and travel essays by such writers as Edward Hoagland, James D. Huston, and Naomi Shihab Nye. Travel essays in this issue take readers to the forest of Kahm in Tibet, the desert towns of India, and cities in the Northern Marianas Islands, Indonesia, and Japan.

The summer 1998 issue, The Zigzag Way, features the new generation of avant-garde poets from the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, guest-edited by Arthur Sze. Nearly all of the writers living in China are under the scrutiny of the government, and the surveillance extends to citizens outside the country as well. Author and translator Wang Ping explains in an interview with Arthur Sze that Chinese writers have learned to avoid censorship while striving to tell the truth by writing, as she says, in a “zigzag way.” Also featured are the unpublished, last poems of Rabindranath Tagore, poems by Robert Wrigley and James Hoggard, fiction by Enchi Fumiko and Phil Condon, and much more.

Mercury Rising features avant-garde new poetry from Taiwan, assembled by guest editors Arthur Sze and Michelle Yeh. Daring and original, the poetry of Taiwan is culturally distinct, blending indigenous, Taiwanese, immigrant, and classical Chinese writing with influences from postmodern Europe, Japan, and America. Included are nearly twenty of Taiwan’s most innovative poets: Xu Huizhi, Hong Hong, Chen Kehua, Luo Zhicheng, Yang Mu, Luo Fu, Luo Ying, Liu Kexiang, Ling Yu, Wu Sheng, Li Jinwen, Monaneng, Walis Nokan, Jian Zhengzhen, Chen Li, Hsia Yu, Shang Qin, and Du Shisan. The editors interview Yang Mu, Ya Xian, and Luo Fu. Other work includes a play by New Zealander Lynda Chanwai-Earle and poetry by Ricardo Pau-Llosa.

Sky Lanterns brings together innovative work by authors—primarily poets—in mainland China, Taiwan, the United States, and beyond who are engaged in truth-seeking, resistance, and renewal. A number of the poets are women, whose work is relatively unknown to English-language readers. Contributors include Amang, Bai Hua, Bei Dao, Chen Yuhong, Duo Yu, Hai Zi, Lan Lan, Karen An-hwei Lee, Li Shangyin, Ling Yu, Pang Pei, Sun Lei, Arthur Sze, Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Wei An, Woeser, Yang Lian, Yang Zi, Yi Lu, Barbara Yien, Yinni, Yu Xiang, and Zhang Zao.

Bright as an Autumn Moon presents Sanskrit verses composed from the fourth to the twelfth centuries. Translated into contemporary English by American poet Andrew Schelling, they illuminate the ardent worship by lovers of their beloved—both human and divine. Each translation is accompanied by the Sanskrit original, transliteration, glossary, and commentary.

In The Colors of Dawn, over forty poets tell the story of Korea’s twentieth-century struggles. The volume is divided into three parts: Poetry of Today, Survivors of War, and Founding Voices. The introduction, “Modern Poetry in Korea: A Historical Background,” looks at the development of poetry amidst such events as Japan’s invasion and occupation, the aftermath of World War II, the Korean War, the dictatorships of Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee, and democratization and modernization of the country. The introduction is written by Brother Anthony of Taizé, co–guest editor of the volume and a well-known translator who has published more than thirty volumes of Korean poetry in translation.

Words from the Fire is a collection by Jidi Majia, a poet of the Nuosu (Yi) people of southwest China’s Sichuan Province. One of China’s most celebrated ethnic minority writers, he writes about the mythic world and cultural beliefs of the Nuosu people, and is deeply concerned with the urgent problems of global strife and the potential for peace among nations that can be achieved through poetry.