July, 2018 After Midnight (Magazine) By Charles Chahwan | July 1, 2018 Presented here for the first time in English, the cult writer Charles Chahwan—"Lebanon's answer to Charles Bukowski"—tells a tale of rival militiamen euphoric with violence. Under the gentle afternoon sunlight, Serge’s body appeared limp and more slouched than usual as he rested against the back seat of the shared taxi, a Morris Princess. He was the sole passenger in the service as it made its way down the coastal highway, as if other potential... February, 2019 On Translating Place in Hélène Aldeguer’s “After the Spring: A Tunisian Youth” (WWB Daily) By Edward Gauvin | February 18, 2019 Edward Gauvin’s translation of an excerpt from Hélène Aldeguer’s After the Spring: A Tunisian Youth appears in the February 2019 issue of WWB. At the Belgian residency of Seneffe (which hosted eight translators with one author in common) a few years ago, I must have been stickling over the spatial relationships of a setting, because the author, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, remarked that the only other translator who’d raked him over... Against Valentine’s Day: 7 International Love Stories for the Antiromantic in You (WWB Daily) By Susan Harris | February 14, 2019 Do you look at bouquets of red roses and calculate when they’ll go limp? Do you think chocolates should come in boxes shaped like aortas and ventricles? Do you want to tell conversation hearts to shut up? If the relentless sentimentality of February brings out the antiromantic in you, we invite you to the more realistic side of our archives. For every moving portrait of a long and happy union (see Bùi Ngọc Tấn’s “Endless Universe”), there... The Translator’s Bookshelf (WWB Daily) By Elisa Wouk Almino | February 13, 2019 When you deeply love a piece of writing, you long to become a part of it—to add to it and insert your own voice into its sentences. This is an idea that Roland Barthes expressed and that the writer and translator Kate Briggs elaborates on in her recent book This Little Art. “To write is to want to rewrite,” Barthes says. The translator, Briggs asserts, does the same: she retraces another author’s words, expanding on and amplifying them. Briggs bestows the process... Words Without Borders Receives National Endowment for the Arts Grant (WWB Daily) By Words Without Borders | February 13, 2019 New York, New York, February 13, 2019—The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced today awards totaling more than $27 million in its first funding round of fiscal year 2019, including an Art Works award to Words Without Borders to support its flagship online magazine of international literature, education programs, and events. The Art Works category is the NEA’s largest funding category and supports projects that focus on the creation of art that meets the highest... The Watchlist: February 2019 (WWB Daily) By Tobias Carroll | February 11, 2019 Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about. From Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Death Is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa, translated from the Arabic by Leri Price | Fiction | 192 pages | ISBN 9780374135737 | US$25.00 What the publisher says: “Khaled Khalifa’s Death Is Hard Work is the new novel from the greatest chronicler of Syria’s ongoing and... The City and the Writer: In San Juan with Frances Negrón-Muntaner (WWB Daily) By Nathalie Handal | February 6, 2019 If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains. —Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities Can you describe the mood of San Juan as you feel/see it? First, let me say that in Puerto Rico, “San Juan” is technically the name of the entire capital but we tend to call each neighborhood by its own name: Santurce (where I was born),... We’re Hiring: Digital Marketing & Communications Manager (WWB Daily) By Words Without Borders | February 4, 2019 Part-time New York, NY The Digital Marketing & Communications Manager will drive growth in engagement and audience across Words Without Borders’s online platforms. The ideal candidate will be an organized self-starter ready to think creatively about how to grow the audience for international writing and increase engagement within the communities we serve. This is an exciting opportunity for an early-career communications professional eager to make an impact within a growing... Best of the B-Sides: Death by Fixation (WWB Daily) By Lori Feathers | February 4, 2019 In this bimonthly series, “Best of the B-Sides,” critic and bookseller Lori Feathers recommends a new work in translation along with a number of backlist (“B-Side”) titles that you might have missed. No event in life has greater personal significance than our own death. The burden of cohabitating with the inevitability that we will die someday is a circumstance that has inspired countless literary works: Captain Ahab and his whale, Dorian Gray and... Conflicting Stories: Our Graphic Issue (Magazine) By Susan Harris | February 1, 2019 Welcome to our thirteenth graphic novel issue, and to our annual celebration of this endlessly expressive genre. The graphic form is consistently urgent, addressing social and political issues with an immediacy that draws readers into lives and settings far from our own. Reflecting our current combative era, the pieces here depict conflicts both personal and political. In settings ranging from the teeming streets of São Paulo to the hermetic lair of a publisher, and with characters... The Tears of an Unknown Artist, or Zaytun Pasta (Magazine) By Sang Young Park | February 1, 2019 In this first installment of Sang Young Park's novella, a filmmaker enlists to earn money for an independent film and finds himself caught up in an even more personal project. Listen to Sang Young Park read "The Tears of an Unknown Artist, or Zaytun Pasta" in the original Korean. It started off as another quiet, boring day. I sat in the rundown office of a queer film production company in the Jongno district, going around the usual illegal downloading sites and... From After the Spring: A Tunisian Youth (Graphic Lit) By Hélène Aldeguer | February 1, 2019 He was 27! Just 27! Barely older than us! Scenes from Schlechtfreund (Graphic Lit) By Vojtěch Mašek and Džian Baban | February 1, 2019 At least five hundred pages, otherwise there's no point! From “Grass” (Graphic Lit) By Keum Suk Gendry-Kim | February 1, 2019 I had no idea I wouldn't be coming back. From City of Fear (Graphic Lit) By Didier Kassaï | February 1, 2019 The troops were led by poachers, tea-sellers, thrift store owners, and ex-convicts who'd turned into officers. Translator's Note: Didier Kassaï's Storm Over Bangui is a comprehensive chronicle of the instability of the Central African Republic following the overthrow of President François Bozizé in 2013 and the beginning of a civil war which continues unabated to this day. Kassaï, an artist from Bangui, the CAR's capital, takes us on a tour of his country's recent history, depicting the rise of Séléka Muslim militias and the Anti-balaka Christian militias that arose in response to them,... A Love-Hate Relationship (Graphic Lit) By André Diniz | February 1, 2019 I prefer a Paulistano's frown over a Carioca's smile. January, 2019 Mourning, Laughter, and Necessary Change: An Interview with Samira Negrouche (WWB Daily) By Olivia Snaije | January 30, 2019 Olivia Snaije conducted the following interview over email with the poet Samira Negrouche, whose work appears in WWB’s January feature. Olivia Snaije (OS): You once told me that living in Algeria requires a lot of energy, because of the political and socio-economic situation. Presidential elections are coming up in April and Abdelaziz Bouteflika is running once again. Do you see any change coming, any sense that Algeria can pull itself out of its current... The City and the Writer: In Brighton, England with Colin Grant (WWB Daily) By Nathalie Handal | January 28, 2019 If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains. —Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities... Linguistic Slapstick, Brutal Joy, and Profane Parrots: 18 Translators on Translating Humor (WWB Daily) By Jessie Chaffee | January 24, 2019 In celebration of this month’s issue of International Humor, we asked top translators to share stories about the joys and challenges of translating humor, from puns to satire to creative curses. Alta L. Price on Dana Grigorcea’s Double Meanings & Geographic Jokes Romanian-born Swiss author Dana Grigorcea packs a lot of laughs—ranging from light to dark to very dark—into An Instinctive Feeling of Innocence, coming out this spring... First Read: From “Incomprehensible Lesson” (WWB Daily) By Fawzi Karim | January 23, 2019 The poems below are excerpted from Fawzi Karim’s Incomprehensible Lesson. Translated by Anthony Howell (working from the author’s own versions) and forthcoming with Carcanet Press, the collection explores the experience of exile and the possibilities of home. Incomprehensible Lesson At the hour of sunset, autumn clouds are scattered sheep drifting toward the distance. The six stalks of our feet dangle over the lip of... 2018 at WWB: 11 Groundbreaking Works (WWB Daily) By Susan Harris | January 22, 2019 Like the French, who celebrate the holiday season into Epiphany and offer bonne années till the end of January, we’re extending our traditional year-end observations into the beginning of the new year and spotlighting some of the groundbreaking writing we presented in 2018. From Vietnam to Kazakhstan, these pieces offer global literary perspectives on racism, aging, feminism, class, and corruption; discuss little-known literary cultures; and inspire us to read beyond our... The City and the Writer: In Martha’s Vineyard with Justen Ahren (WWB Daily) By Nathalie Handal | January 17, 2019 If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains. —Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities Can you describe the mood of Martha’s Vineyard as you feel/see it? The Vineyard still is one of those places where life is married to the seasons. The geese migrating over the ponds; the first hungry-throated call of the frogs from vernal... The Watchlist: January 2019 (WWB Daily) By Tobias Carroll | January 15, 2019 Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about. From And Other Stories | Tentacle by Rita Indiana, translated from the Spanish by Achy Obejas | Fiction | 144 pages | ISBN 978-1911508342 | US$13.99 What the publisher says: “Tentacle is an electric novel with a big appetite and a brave vision, plunging headfirst into questions of climate change, technology, Yoruba ritual,... In “HELL,” Alasdair Gray Creates a Celtic, Wind-lashed Translation of Dante’s “Inferno” (Book Reviews) By Reviewed by Jamie Mackay | January 14, 2019 Since the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri finished his Divina Commedia, in 1320, more than one hundred different translations of his work have been published in English, over a dozen in this decade alone. The selection currently available caters to various tastes and purposes. Allen Mandelbaum’s blank-verse effort, studied in thousands of classrooms and universities around the world, remains the canonical go-to and has been recognized as such by Italy’s literary... What the Happiest Kids in the World Are Reading (WWB Daily) By Michele Hutchison | January 10, 2019 Translator Michele Hutchison, co-author (with Rina Mae Acosta) of The Happiest Kids in the World: How Dutch Parents Help their Kids by Doing Less, explores the relationship between happiness and the books that are available to Dutch children, and some of the differences between children’s book publishing in the Netherlands and the US. Her most recent translation for WWB is Griet Op de Beeck’s “What You’ve Given Up Hoping for Counts Twice as Much, She’d... Page 1 of 205 pages 1 2 3 > Last ›
