Writing Clips
Eric R Stone is both a journalist and a translator. For a decade now, he's used specialist knowledge and local savvy to help people tell their stories － whether they be modern tales of political repression and human rights, or ancient ones, from religious and philosophical canons to the lives of Tang Dynasty courtesans.
Religion Unplugged
The 300-Year-Old Monastery in Japan That’s Full of Westerners
January 6, 2025
In the rural mountains of Okayama sits Songenji — a 300-year old Zen temple that is both a pillar of Japanese discipline and tradition and a maverick of globalism and progress. It’s a place where women live and study Zen side-by-side with men as coeds (something once unheard of), and the sangha (monastic order) is mostly Western foreigners.
Read on
Lacuna Magazine
Redacted Fantasy: China’s Dystopian Censorship of Online Fiction
November 28, 2023
China’s crackdown on fantasy literature and video games poses a critical obstacle to readers, authors, and those who seek to make these works accessible. Why restrict these apparently innocuous stories? Eric R Stone relays accounts from censored writers who describe how censorship and outright banning of certain concepts, words, and allusions render works of fiction unintelligible.
Read on
MORE Clips →
