Xian Dyad
Jason Price Everett
Spuyten Duyvil Novella Series
ISBN 978-0-923389-88-8 $10.00 124 pages
cover photo by Mi Yuzhi
Xian Dyad is the record of one man's attempt to chart what Anaïs Nin referred to as the "cities of the interior." In this extraordinarily perceptive book, author Jason Price Everett struggles to reveal and understand something of his own personal topography, even as he conveys the reader on a sweeping real-life journey from north-central China to southeast Asia. From gray days and inebriated nights at a university in Xi'an to heatstroke in the ruins of Ayutthaya, from concentrated observation of a Khmer classical dance class at the School of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh to crossing the Mekong River by boat in order to reconcile a Vietnam of old movies with the Vietnam of first-hand experience, the tropes of foreign travel are used to systematically dissect and illuminate the relationships between ideas and individuals as the inner life and the outer life alternate in their mutual depiction of each other. An intimate portrait of the sensitive mind in temporary exile, Xian Dyad is the perfect book for those who compulsively travel, only to meet themselves at the destination.
Jason Price Everett was born in Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. in 1972. He acquired an education of sorts at Lafayette College, Cornell University and the University of Paris. He has held over thirty different positions of employment to date, one of the more interesting being that of English professor at a university in Xi’an, China. His first book, Unfictions, was released by 8th House Publishing in 2009. His collection Hypodrome:Selected Poems 1990-2010 was released by 8th House in the spring of 2012. His work has appeared over the years in such diverse publications (both print and digital) as The Mad Hatters Review, Si Señor, Writers Notes Magazine, The Prague Literary Review, City Writers Review, Riverbabble, Underground Voices, BLATT, Brand, The Alchemy Review, Carcinogenic Poetry, Interrupting Infinity, KGB Bar Lit Magazine, Ronin, CV2 and the Show Thieves Anthology of Contemporary Montreal Poetry. He currently lives in Montreal, Canada.