The salon was held by Yilin Press in Jiyouyan book store on July 4 dealing with Ted Chiang's work Making Fiction Poetic. Wu Yan, fiction writer and doctoral tutor at Beijing Normal University, and translator Zhang Boran were invited to the salon to share their reading experience and personal understanding of Ted Chiang and his works.

Ted Chiang, or Jiang Fengnan, is regarded as a most outstanding Chinese-American writer. His debut was 25 years ago, and his fifteen published novellas and short stories are elaborate works. He won four Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, three Locus Awards, and several other literary prizes. His works overcome the limitations of usual fiction, and the storytelling and scientific accuracy of his works reach a high level.

Two of Ted Chiang's works, theStory of Your Life andThe Life cycle of Software Objects, which include thirteen stories, were published by Yilin Press in June. The books have received favorable comments from readers, and were in high demand on release.

On July 5, the salon was about the original manuscript of Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, published by Yilin Press under the original titleBeginners. "We are all 'beginners' on the road of literature" was held at the One Way Street bookstore, Beijing. Li Jingze, vice president of China Writers Association, was invited to the salon to speak on Raymond Carver's works, along with Jiang Fangzhou, Associate Editor of New Weekly, and writer Ye Yang, who writes under the pseudonym Duyan.

In 1980, editor Gordon Lish received the manuscript of Beginners from Raymond Carver, and after two rounds of meticulous editing, deleted more than half of the content to produce What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Beginners, published by Yilin Press, is the uncut version of the book.

The comparison of the original Beginners with the later work reflects both the greatness and guilt of editing, said Li Jingze. And the difference between the “two Carvers” shows an author’s different literary views and world views. So the publication of the two versions is a great opportunity for countless literature "beginners" in the world to learn and research.

Carver is considered a great American short story writer, and a paragon of the simple style literature. Since 2009, Yilin Press has been translating his works and has published seven books, including poems, essays and novels, with the ownership of exclusive Chinese rights. Among them, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, published in 2010, was printed more than twenty times, and sold well over 130,000 copies.