We asked notable Beijingers: "What's on your bookshelf?" Here's how Evan Osnos, China correspondent for the New Yorker magazine, answered:

We asked notable Beijingers: "What's on your bookshelf?" Here's how Dr. Geoff Raby, the Australian ambassador to China, answered:

Last week we reported Peter Hessler’s last minute withdrawal from the Bookworm Literary Festival for unspecified personal reasons. Since then several other events have been canceled or changed, with one session altered after the author was refused a visa for China.

Junot Diaz, who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, is coming to town as part of The Bookworm International Literary Festival. Ahead of his visit, we had the chance to ask him about the challenge of teaching at M.I.T., his thoughts on the Haiti earthquake, and why people who read can be considered a special tribe.

Selling Chinese literature to the English-speaking world is tough – especially when it’s by contemporary authors little known outside China. But Harvey Thomlinson is doing just that, with his new Hong Kong-based venture Make Do Publishing. On the eve of his appearance at the Bookworm Literary Festival, Dan Edwards talks to Harvey about Make Do and China’s online writing revolution.

“This society is like a dirty river,” Chinese novelist Murong Xuecun says, his words tumbling out in a rapid-fire stream. “The river holds all kinds of people and all kinds of behaviour. Some can melt into the river, others can’t.” Murong’s dark world view has informed a string of Chinese bestsellers and made him the enfant terrible of the country’s often staid literary scene. With the publication of an English edition of Leave Me Alone – A Novel of Chengdu in Hong Kong, and Murong’s appearance at the Bookworm Literary Festival, Beijingers now have the chance to experience Murong’s hard-boiled style.

We asked notable Beijingers: "What's on your bookshelf?" Here's how Zhang Lijia, author of the memoir "Socialism is Great," answered:

My favorite childhood book was a cartoon version of Journey to the West, because it was one of the very few fun books available to Chinese children in the 1970s.

The Bookworm's Literary Festival kicks of TONIGHT (Friday, March 5), so over the next few weeks we'll be asking notable Beijingers: "What's on your bookshelf?" Who better to start with than Alex Pearson, owner of the Bookworm?

Admit it. There’s been at least one moment, marveling at the sun rising over the Forbidden City or the moon rising out of a pair of split pants, that you’ve paused and thought, “Wow, I should write a book about this magical place called China.”

And maybe you should. With the Bookworm International Literary Festival opening tomorrow night, we sought some advice and encouragement from two of the festival guests: prodigious novelist/creative writing professor Jill Dawson and publisher/writer Graham Earnshaw.

As A.A. Milne said "You cannot tell a man by the lobster he eats, but you can tell something about him by the literature he reads, " so there you go. With that in mind we took a good snoop at some Beijinger's bookshelves and the results were, well, you can find out for yourself in the March issue of the Beijinger's Cover Feature. 

There's much more inside the magazine than that. For a start there's a cut-out-and-keep Guy Delisle comic (more accurately it's a cut-out-and-fold-into-a-mini-zine-and-keep comic). You don't see those everyday.