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 ]
Literacy organisations welcome signs that people of all ages are still reading books in physical and ebook formatsIf an Englishman's home is his castle, then Ofcom's latest survey suggests most battlements are still lined with books, with the average UK adult's literary collection amounting to... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-08-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The publishing industry's packaging of women's literary fiction in stereotypically girly covers makes great books seem trashy.If you take a look at the cover of Alice Munro's latest Nobel Prize-winning short fiction collection, The View From Castle Rock, you probably wouldn't guess it includes... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2014-07-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Men are giving up on reading books because they prefer to watch the big screen version instead, a... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-04-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Comedian lambasted for declaring he had never voted will urge readers to 'discard apathy and challenge status quo' in new bookMarx had the Communist Manifesto, Mao his Little Red Book. Now, the comedian Russell Brand, who caused a storm with his declaration that he had never voted and never... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-03-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Literary agent David Godwin predicts that small publishers in India will soon be forced aside by monolithic publishing houses run overseas. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2014-01-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The unnamed protagonist in Jack London's 'To Build a Fire' gets into trouble while hiking in the frozen Yukon with his dog. Widely considered to be London’s best short story, 'To Build a Fire' captures the cold with painful accuracy. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2014-01-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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"City of Night" was not the first overtly gay-themed book but it may be the most unapologetic, a searing screed of life on the edge.I spent part of Wednesday afternoon at UCLA, on a panel to celebrate the 50th anniversary of John Rechy’s novel “City of Night,” newly reissued to commemorate the... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2013-10-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Novelist Scott Turow's 'Identical' is a compulsively readable crime story about brothers, feuding families and a long-ago murder.Over the course of nine novels, Scott Turow's Kindle County has become one the best-known settings in American literature. While fictional locations are not uncommon... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2013-10-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Per a report from Bloomberg last night, Fox Networks president of distribution Mike Hopkins is close to being named CEO of Disney/21st Century Fox/Comcast joint venture Hulu. After founder Jason Kilar resigned in March (along with chief technology officer Tom Rich), svp of content and... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2013-10-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The real problem with ebooks is that they're more 'e' than book, so an entirely different set of rules govern what someone can and can't do with them compared to physical books, especially when it comes to pricing. The collusion in pricing has been a public issue for a while, but we need to talk... Continue reading at Wired
[ Wired | 2013-10-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Terry McMillan's eighth novel, 'Who Asked You?,' is rich in narrative tension, nuanced humor and moral heft."Who Asked You?" is Terry McMillan's eighth book, and it is a corker: a long, smooth, Indian-summer cocktail. For all the racy, scandalous pleasures in books such as "Waiting to Exhale"... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2013-09-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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After a two-decade-long relationship between the magazine giant Time Inc. and American Express, Time Inc. plans to close quickly on its purchase of American Express’s publishing division. “This 20-year courtship is finally bei ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2013-09-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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James McBride takes liberties as he visits the story of white abolitionist John Brown through the eyes of a young slave in 'The Good Lord Bird.'John Brown, the white abolitionist who sought to free black slaves with the barrel of a gun, is a recurring character in American literature. He's one... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2013-08-31 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In an interview with Guernica magazine, literary agent Nicole Aragi discusses the crisis of literary fiction, why translated books don't sell in the US, and more. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-07-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Times Book Critic David L. Ulin reflects on DOMA and writer John Rechy.John Rechy should be proud. It was his 1963 novel "City of Night" ¿ the story of a gay street hustler that took place, in part, in downtown¿s Pershing Square ¿ that helped carve out a place for gay writing in American literature. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2013-06-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A single good-sized book will provide you with many hours of entertainment, it will make you think about some aspect of the world around you and make you reconsider that aspect a little. And even better, that single book can be acquired for practically nothing. Continue reading at ABC News
[ ABC News | 2012-07-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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More than half of tablet adopters are reading books and other media on their tablet screens instead of relying on paper. Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2012-07-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Cissy Houston, Whitney Houston's gospel-singer mom, has sold a book about her late daughter to HarperCollins Publishers, according to a person with knowledge of the deal. Ms. Houston, who is 78, met with publishers in New York in April to pitch them on the project, according to a report in The... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2012-06-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. Microsoft has a long history of supporting bitter rivals -- even those that have long publicly disparaged the company, offering funds to Nokia, Corel and, most famously, Apple. It also has a long history of... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2012-05-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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For nearly a decade, some say even longer, people in the publishing industry have been decrying the death of the midlist. As the story goes, the industry consolidatedsmaller and midsize publishers were gobbled up and brought together into six large houses that themselves are small pieces of... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2011-11-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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