CATEGORIES

Translating History

A Conversation with Isabel Fargo Cole

The Pregnant Woman from Zamboanga

In this story by an indigenous writer from the southern Philippines, a crime continues to haunt a local’s thoughts.

CONVERSATIONS ON THE FUTURE OF TRANSLATION

Good Storytelling Still Trending - An Interview with Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Cheating / Death

A girl learns her first lessons about cheating and death at her grandparents’ house, playing cards and Scrabble and listening to them read from the obituaries in the Detroit Jewish News.

Tokyo's Mukōjima Hyakkaen Garden

NEAR THE HEART of old Tokyo, surrounded by the largest metro area in the world, the Mukōjima-Hyakkaen Garden provides a respite from the bustle of the city with a traditional and lush corner of peace and quiet. For more than two centuries, the garden has been a haven for the city’s writers and artists as well as anyone who desires a temporary escape from urban life into the subtle tranquility of nature.

Race, History, and the Body

Humanity on Display

Of Comics and Bipolar Disorder - A Conversation with Rachel Lindsay

Rachel Lindsay is a cartoonist based in Vermont and the author of a graphic memoir, RX, that was published in 2018 by Grand Central Publishing. RX explores the powerful interplay of word and image that resists biomedical prescriptivism and espouses the political potential of sharing subjective experiences of living with bipolar disorder through comics. Her comic strip “Rachel Lives Here Now” appears weekly in Seven Days, an alternative newspaper in Vermont. In our conversation with Lindsay, we discuss the pertinent issues surrounding mental health and the role of graphic memoirs in reclaiming the identity of the patient in a hierarchical biomedical system, specifically in the context of her recent memoir, RX.

LIT TRENDS - 3 Online Book Clubs with a Global Perspective

ONE OF LIFE’S GREAT pleasures is sharing a favorite book with a community of bright, engaging friends, wine in hand and the fireplace crackling. In a perfect world, the host of your local book club is charming, the introverts are cozy and the extroverts gregarious, the conversation is brilliant and never lags, and the serving board groans under the weight of everyone’s best-loved dishes.

The Monkey's Paw

TORONTO IS ONE of the largest and most diverse cities in North America, a vibrant urban center whose culture constantly fluctuates alongside the many unique people who move through it.

Cross-Cultural Romance with Global Itinerary

A Conversation with Sarah Ladipo Manyika

Almaty's Changing Musical Rule Book

Traveling across central Asia, Nicholas Pritchard discovers musical acts of dissent in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Our Guide in Warsaw

A couple finds their hired tour guide more sage for hire—like Socrates, an ambulatory pedagogue.

The Other Woman

A stalled train and shifting visage make for an eerie commute.

Lalalà

She makes the little balls with extreme care, as if for a sphericity contest, and then she puts each one next to the other. This order, which she must disturb to fry them, gives her a strange sense of peace.

Therapy by Living

Follow a writer-flâneuse on a New York City odyssey, appreciating life’s smaller miracles in a city with many entry points.

Two Wings, One Generous Heart

A Tribute to Margarita Engle

Cultivating Empathy And Humility

A Conversation with Laila Lalami

The Moon Through The Hard Water

America Doesn’t Like Me

A Date With Svetlana Alexievich In Berlin Or, Smuggling Bugs Into Soviet Moscow

A Cuban writer, having lived in Soviet-era Moscow and East Berlin in the 1980s, reflects on real-life bugs and make-believe characters.

The Poetry Of Heartbreak

Miklós Radnóti’s “The Fifth Eclogue”

Is the Horse Oppressed?

An encounter between a tonga driver and the “cruelty folks” seizes a university student’s attention on his way to class.

From The Heart Of The Void

A Conversation with Annie Le Brun

Bless This Land

Poetry.

On Home, Belongingness, And Multicultural Britain

A Conversation with Hannah Lowe

Trout Fishing In Tehran

On the fiftieth anniversary of Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, an Iranian writer (and devoted Brautigan reader) considers how he, perhaps even more than other Beat writers, achieved a wide readership in Tehran.

Who Is Speaking

Our dream paths cross and come to nothing buried in heretic fog Impenetrable silence burns in your eyes Even speaking you stay silent – Anise Koltz, Un monde de pierres

The Enduring Impermanence Of Jenny Erpenbeck

For Jenny Erpenbeck, nothing lasts forever, not home, not the rituals that connect us to previous generations, not even death. Even her writing style celebrates this impermanence.

Vectors, Vanishing Points, And Vicissitudes In The Works Of Jenny Erpenbeck

Life for Jenny Erpenbeck’s characters is a vector, a movement through time and space, in which both temporal and spatial circumstances impinge on the individual’s trajectory.

The Cadillac

A bar mitzvah brings multiple generations of a family together in celebration, far from the reach of the evil eye.

Negotiating Four Generations Of Voices

(with a Little Help from Google Earth)