Only Connect: World Writing from Iowa

Poetry by Gunnar Harding

Puberty

     was it at the Palace of Sport in 1952? a whole school class

Translated from Swedish by Roger Greenwald

Poetry by Marie Etienne

A Witness Disappears

The more she spoke, the darker it became. She plunged into the forest everywhere and she saw the sea. Busy holding on to my thoughts, I can't think, nor can I prevent the images.

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

Fiction by Kei Miller

Read Out Sunday

This is how Sue gave her life to God and got back her virginity. That Sunday was church as usual. The same women as always in Jesus hats, their hands raised and their eyes squeezed so

Poetry by Sélim Nassib

“I don’t carry your picture in my purse”

I don't carry your picture in my purse; it burns anyway under my eyelids. Every expression, gesture, intonation, without my even wanting it, is etched— most clearly, your

Translated from Estonian by Tiina Aleman

Fiction by Saša Stanišiç

A Classical Education

"And Mister Mozart didn't fasten his seatbelt either," the little monster tattled.

Translated from German by Saša Stanišiç and Janet Hendrickson

Poetry by Xi Chuan

Moon

So many things follow us like the moon, listening for our primal cries. We stop, it stops, while thirty miles ahead bright moonlight floods the brain of a wild animal. Grief rushes

Translated from Chinese by Diana Shi and George O’Connell

Nonfiction by Christopher Merrill

Only Connect

"Only connect," E.M. Forster famously advised novelistsóand this is the governing principle of the International Writing Program, which brings the writers of the world to the

Translated from English

Fiction by Rafael Courtoisie

The Shakes

Now I have to get the fourth glass down me before I can operate. I mean, the fourth glass, filled to the brim, full of the amber stuff. Yes, now I drink the amber, Scotch. Because of my

Translated from Spanish by Patricia Anne Odber de Baubeta

Fiction by Hana Andronikova

V. Samsara

I have always been intrigued by the fact that cows in India are sacred. Unmolested, they roam the streets of towns and villages. In some parts they have a bell round their neck and a jasmine

Translated from Czech by David Short

Fiction by Alex Epstein

Ten Short Pieces

The Artist's Likeness Is Like an Artist This tale is rather old: Two painters wanted to see which of them could paint the painting that best imitated reality . . . One of the painters

Translated from Hebrew by Becka Mara McKay

Poetry by Ashur Etwebi

White Birds in a Black Space

He said: You may walk into the spaces of mildness and obedience with the rebellious, the dreamers and the scared; you know that the city has been raped, that everything is permissible,

Translated from Arabic by Ashur Etwebi

Fiction by Etgar Keret

Gulliver in Icelandic

On my first day, I was overcome with dread. It wasn't even four in the afternoon and the sun had set long ago. They turn on the streetlamps here by two, two-thirty, and in the brief

Translated from Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger

Poetry by Ra Heeduk

Crying over Light Green

Even as I scoop Korean sushi into my mouth with a trembling hand, the train forces the fields of summer into my eyes. The light-green rice paddies prick my pupils. Why is the field so

Translated from Korean by Won-Chung Kim and Christopher Merrill

Poetry by István László G.

The Jungle

It was dark like the inside of a piano, the twanging of the instrument filled your eyes, I said you looked through octaves. The sound is made in the closed coffin, it comes to life in

Translated from Hungarian by István Geher

Poetry by Gentian Çoçoli

Almost Parnassus

Now comes the labor of descent. Walking down the wooden stairs of the house, it comes to you, you are descending the slopes of Parnassus— the chips in the white plaster, like

Translated from Albanian by Erica Weitzman