The Space of Risk: An Interview With Jacob Wren
When I first encountered Jacob Wren and his work, it was in the mid-1990s, back when he was a Toronto poet known as Death Waits. Now, as co-artistic director of PME-ART, he exists as a constantly moving target, exploring performance through collaboration, text, and multiple other means.
The Limits and Freedoms of Literary Regionalism: How Sandra Cisneros’s Chicano Literature Reimagines Chicago’s Borders
Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories asks us to imagine literary regionalism as more than just literature set in a single place, but as fiction’s ability to funnel different places and the experiences they birth into one environment.
Wislawa Szymborska’s Disquieting Jokes
I think about jokes a lot when I read Wislawa Szymborska. Her poems build the way jokes do, with irony, misdirection, and distraction: setups that leave you completely unprepared for her disorienting final verses. Instead of leading to certainty, they take you somewhere else entirely.
An Interview with Adam Biles of Shakespeare and Company
Shakespeare and Company is one of the best-known bookshops in the world. The first time I visited was a hot summer’s day many years ago. I was a little embarrassed about my tourist’s awe.
Indies Elsewhere: Cardumen Libros
From figuring out how much pizza her royalties would purchase to leading a poetry publishing project in Colombia—Cardumen Libros—Alejandra Algorta has always been a supporter of the things that are urgent, that are important.
You Can’t Trust Anybody in Elvira Navarro’s A Working Woman (And What That Says About Us)
Elvira Navarro’s A Working Woman, translated by Christina MacSweeney, interrogates the psyche of characters mired by the Spanish economic crisis and the realities and lies they build around themselves in search of catharsis.
Perfectly Aligned: Inger Christensen’s Poetry Through Her American Translator Susanna Nied
Though Christensen’s work has been well-loved in Europe since the publications of her first two collections of poetry, in Danish, her poetry did not reach American audiences until alphabet, translated by Susanna Nied and published by New Directions in 2001.
“Adventure of a Skier” and Calvino’s Theory of Lightness
Last week, the New Yorker released the first English translation of Italo Calvino’s “The Adventure of a Skier,” which first appeared in the 1970 short story collection Difficult Loves. How does this “new” story fit into the themes and philosophical musings of the work as a whole?
The Creative Process of Translating Text: An Interview With Dr. Erdağ Göknar
I spoke with Dr. Erdağ Göknar, an award-winning scholar, poet, and translator, about how his diaspora background contributes to his work, his approach to translation as a creative act, and the limiting factor of editorial expectations in publishing Turkish texts in translation.
“Living Imaginarily Under Truthful Circumstances”: An Interview With Elizabeth Powell
Elizabeth A. I. Powell’s poems are adventures in language; they travel freely across the borderlands of genre and bring the reader along for an inventive, unforgettable ride.