John Briscoe: The Lost Poems of Cangjie

John Briscoe’s The Lost Poems of Cangjie, published by RiskPress, are translations of recently discovered poems of the Chinese historical figure Cangjie, storied inventor of the Chinese system of writing during the reign of The Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, in the 27th century BCE, approximately 4700 years ago.

(Some scholars do not believe there was a Yellow Emperor, just as they once believed there was no Xia dynasty. Evidence unearthed in the city of Yanshi in 1959, however, proved the existence of the Xia, which ruled after the time of the Yellow Emperor from approximately 2100 to 1800 BCE. The discoveries of Cangjie’s poems may prove the existence of the Yellow Emperor.)

John Briscoe’s Crush: Wine and California from the Padres to Paris was one of four finalists for the 2016 California Historical Society Book Award, and will be published by the University of Nevada Press this fall. His essay The Judgment of Paris, lavishly praised by California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia, ran in Catamaran Literary Reader last year and is a nominee for both the Pushcart and Best American Essay awards. He has practiced law in San Francisco for 45 years, tried and argued cases in the United States Supreme Court and the Permanent Court of International Arbitration in The Hague, was Special Adviser to the United Nations for the environmental aftermath of the Gulf War, and is a Distinguished Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.