Interviews Renee H. Shea Monique Truong / Photo © Haruka Sakaguchi Monique Truong, who came to the United States in 1975 as a refugee from Vietnam, began exploring untold and ignored histories in her first novel, The Book of Salt (2003), told through the voice of Binh, the cook of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris. Her autobiographical second novel, Bitter in the Mouth (2010) is a coming-of-age story set in North Carolina. In her most recent novel, The Sweetest Fruits (Viking, 2019), Truong tells the story of Lafcadio Hearn from the perspective of three women: his mother, Rosa; his first wife, Alethea; and his Japanese wife, Setsu. Shea: At its core, The Sweetest Fruits is a story about storytelling—and it’s Russian dolls of narrative! It’s not only that three different women have their say about Hearn and their relationship with him, but each is telling her story to a specific audience—so issues of mediation and agency add further complications, as do oral vs. written stories and translation. How did you arrive at this approach instead of just telling the story in the voice of one person, then the next, then the next? Truong: This question is a Russian doll of inquiries! You’re absolutely right that the novel is interested in the different ways that stories are transmitted to us: oral vs. written, in our mother tongue vs. in translation, private story vs. public history, women’s voices vs. men’s, face-to-face vs.... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2019-09-17 13:54:26 UTC ]
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A COOKBOOK IS a kind of invitation to its author’s table. So it is with Irina Georgescu’s book Carpathia: Food from the Heart of Romania, which draws overdue attention to the food of her native country. Of course, the culinary world is crowded and chaotic at the best of times. Turmoil such as it... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-05-23 17:00:06 UTC ]
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Interviews Veronica Esposito Emma Ramadan is a literary translator based in Providence, Rhode Island, where she is the co-owner of Riffraff, a bookstore and bar. She is the recipient of an NEA Translation Fellowship, a PEN/Heim grant, and a Fulbright... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-05-18 18:20:27 UTC ]
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IT IS ONLY IN the second half of Ellen O’Connell Whittet’s poignant and exquisite memoir about ballet (and other causes of female pain), What You Become in Flight, that it dawns on the reader — or on this reader, at least — that she’s invoking the word “flight” in two senses: the balletic sense... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-05-07 17:00:08 UTC ]
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On this episode of Rekindled, award-winning author Vanessa Hua talks with Amy Meyerson about her new book, The Imperfects, a story about a priceless inheritance that leads one family on a life-altering pursuit of the truth. Meyerson talks about the process of researching for her new novel, using... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-05-06 20:00:35 UTC ]
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Two celebrated memoirists of mental illness—Marin Sardy, author of The Edge of Every Day: Sketches of Schizophrenia, and Sarah C. Townsend, author of Setting the Wire: A Memoir of Postpartum Psychosis—discuss writing, families, and the struggle to make meaning out of madness. * Sarah Townsend:... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-05-01 08:47:51 UTC ]
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Yes, it’s true: the British author Evelyn Waugh’s first wife was also named Evelyn. (Evelyn Florence Margaret Winifred Gardner, to be precise.) But as you might imagine, if you know anything about the Taylor Swift-Taylor Lautner debacle of 2009, things did not go well for the Evelyns. The year... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-04-27 14:02:34 UTC ]
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I FIRST CAME INTO CONTACT with Douglas Glover when he was the editor of a literary magazine I admired very much, Numéro Cinq. I persuaded him to take me on as a writer by offering him an interview with Gabriel Josipovici, whose work I knew we both loved. I’d become interested in the creative... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-04-20 19:00:19 UTC ]
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On this episode of Rekindled, Oscar Villalon, editor in chief of ZYZZYVA, speaks with author and illustrator Lisa Brown. Brown’s latest book is called Long Story Short: 100 Classic Books in Three Panels, in which she distills long classics (Proust, Madame Bovary, Jonathan Franzen, etc) into one... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-04-10 20:00:17 UTC ]
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Interviews Veronica Esposito John Keene is the author of Counternarratives, which received an American Book Award and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. He is also the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award and a MacArthur Fellowship. He is the... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-03-30 15:27:14 UTC ]
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Interviews Tiffany Hawk In 2012, at sixteen years old, Joshua Wong and the pro-democracy student group he founded took on the Hong Kong government, mobilized more than one hundred thousand student protesters, and surprised the world by successfully... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-03-23 16:00:04 UTC ]
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The Little Tiger Group is bringing all of its imprints—Little Tiger, Caterpillar, Stripes and 360 Degrees—under the Little Tiger brand, with Thomas Truong promoted to the role of group publishing director. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-11 00:36:47 UTC ]
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Every Monday through Friday, AudioFile’s editors recommend the best in audiobook listening. We keep our daily episodes short and sweet, with audiobook clips to give you a sample of our featured listens. AudioFile’s Josephine Reed spoke with author and National Ambassador for Young People’s... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-03-10 08:48:25 UTC ]
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In 2013, I corresponded with David Ferry by phone to conduct a wide-ranging interview on his poetry, translations, and literary life. He had just won the National Book Award for Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations and was still at work on Virgil’s Aeneid which he published in 2018. Today,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-03-05 09:48:44 UTC ]
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An awesome daily roundup of the most interesting bookish links from around the web. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-03-01 11:30:56 UTC ]
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Sally Rooney’s takeover of the world continues apace today with the announcement that the Irish literary phenom’s debut novel Conversations With Friends will be adapted into a twelve-part series for the BBC. Like the upcoming BBC/Hulu adaptation of Rooney’s 2019 juggernaut Normal People, which... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-25 18:39:10 UTC ]
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BBC Three is adapting Sally Rooney’s 2017 debut novel, Conversations with Friends, into twelve half an hour episodes directed by Oscar-nominated Irish film director Lenny Abrahamson. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-02-24 15:37:51 UTC ]
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Andrew Ziminski’s book on stonemasonry is an enthralling story of the people who helped to shape some of the nation’s most treasured buildings. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-02-19 16:16:39 UTC ]
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