Interviews Veronica Esposito Photo by Camila Valdés Megan McDowell has translated many contemporary authors from Latin America and Spain, including Alejandro Zambra, Samanta Schweblin, and Lina Meruane. Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, her translations have been published in the New Yorker, Tin House, the Paris Review, Harper’s, and McSweeney’s, among others. Veronica Esposito: As a translator, you’ve primarily worked with writers from Chile and Argentina, a region with a very rich literary history, and you are the primary translator for two of the standout authors to recently emerge from the Southern Cone—Alejandro Zambra and Samanta Schweblin. What is special about this region and its literatures? Megan McDowell: I’m not an academic or a critic, so I’m very reluctant to try to draw connecting lines through the literary histories of countries I live in but that aren’t mine. Every time I make a generalization, all the exceptions spring to mind. But, my assumptions or predispositions go something like this: Chilean writers tend to look inward, to play with autofiction, to write the domestic and the personal. Argentine writers tend toward the surreal, toward madness and fantasy and the uncanny. Both, I think, can get pretty experimental with form. Both have histories of dictatorship and state violence, which can rear its head in fictions in various ways. If you look at the writers I’ve translated, these... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2020-06-22 15:20:00 UTC ]
As a small press launches dedicated to new male fiction, authors including Anne Enright and Nikesh Shukla ask if men are really being pushed out of publishingJude Cook, author and publisher of Conduit BooksIn Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the languid Lord Henry announces: “There is... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2025-05-31 08:00:39 UTC ]
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The African American Literature Book Club has launched the BLK Bestseller List, showcasing the bestselling books by Black authors going back 16 months. It consists of monthly data from Circana Bookscan on the top 20 hardcover and paperback fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books, as well as... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2025-05-22 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Here are the seven queer books that made it onto the bestseller lists this week, from literary fiction to YA SFF. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2025-05-17 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Conduit Books will not ‘seek an adversarial stance … but the emphasis at first will be on ambitious, funny, political and cerebral fiction by men that is being passed by’A writer and critic has launched a new independent press that will focus on publishing books by male writers.Conduit Books,... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2025-04-28 17:07:04 UTC ]
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BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled authors are writing some of the most thought-provoking, original, and memorable literary fiction works. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2025-04-14 11:45:00 UTC ]
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Viet Thanh Nguyen explains why most American literature is the literature of empire. | Lit Hub Criticism Eleanor Lanahan reflects on the literary legacy of The Great Gatsby, her grandfather’s timeless novel, as it turns 100. | Lit Hub Biography Sarah Viren and Vauhini Vara discuss voice, tech,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-04-12 10:30:11 UTC ]
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Viet Thanh Nguyen explains why most American literature is the literature of empire. | Lit Hub Criticism Moeen Farrokhi on translating literature into Farsi and life into English. | Lit Hub On Translation How unraveling a short story into a novel gave Natalia Theodoridou “permission to indulge... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-04-11 10:30:18 UTC ]
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One way to understand the dilemma of contemporary American literature in the age of Donald Trump is to see it as an imperial literature. The United States is a different kind of empire, exerting global hegemonic power through hundreds of military bases and a network of alliances, trade... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-04-11 08:59:55 UTC ]
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Climate change is conspicuously absent from most realist, literary fiction set in the present day. Hurricanes, wildfires, floods, droughts and other natural disasters are part of our daily lives, yet they’re absent, save for brief mentions of a news clip for a college protest from much of our... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2025-03-04 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Out of 1,100 submissions, writer Giada Scodellaro’s Ruins, Child has won the 2024 Novel Prize, and will be published early next year. The Novel Prize is awarded biennially to an unpublished work of literary fiction and “rewards novels that explore and expand the possibilities of the form, and... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-02-13 18:21:05 UTC ]
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Regular bookstores might be dying—but bookstores dedicated to romance novels are thriving thanks to TikTok and a desire for third places. Throughout Harvard Square, there are many bookshop brimming with the latest literary fiction and intellectual memoirs, patronized by scholarly types. But in... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2025-02-13 10:30:00 UTC ]
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1. Check the cover for clues. Literary fiction will have the title in Helvetica along with amorphous shapes in shades of that year’s Pantone color. Genre fiction will have a little cutout showing the face of either a wizard or a rakish duke. It opens to reveal the whole picture, and they’re... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2025-02-07 12:15:00 UTC ]
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Black American literature starts with anti-literacy laws, then goes on to produce some of the most influential writers in the English language. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2025-02-05 12:30:00 UTC ]
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I asked what your favorite 2024 queer books were, and here are the most popular responses, from queer literary fiction to M/M sports romance! Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-12-26 11:15:00 UTC ]
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Among this spring’s most anticipated offerings are the latest novel from Susan Choi, about a father’s mysterious disappearance, and Colum McCann’s tale of transcontinental cables and the deep sea divers who repair them. Other noteworthy titles include novels by Morgan Jerkins, Torrey Peters,... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-12-06 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Based on books written by Herbert’s son, the series strays in a few details from the writer’s vision of the Dune World. Continue reading at The Conversation
[ The Conversation | 2024-11-25 14:06:41 UTC ]
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From Classroom to Conference: Insights from the American Literary Translators Association Meeting in Milwaukee, by Daria Shchukina From the Road [email protected] Wed, 11/13/2024 - 13:36 Photo by Daria ShchukinaUniversity of Oklahoma student Daria... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2024-11-13 19:36:48 UTC ]
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Dogeaters wasn’t just the first Filipino American novel I ever read; it was the first work of literary fiction I picked up on my own outside of a classroom. I was in my mid-twenties. I had already flunked out of college twice, having spent exponentially more time behind turntables, picking... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2024-11-13 09:56:39 UTC ]
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