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 ]
When the news becomes too difficult to watch, these books about refugees will having you questioning the blurred line between fiction and reality. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-01-07 11:38:59 UTC ]
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The Street is a groundbreaking work of American literature that is as relevant today as when it was published in 1946. When it won Ann Petry the Houghton Mifflin Prize for Debut Writers, the literary world was put on notice. Everyone agreed that the novel was brilliant, but, as is the case with... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-01-06 09:47:44 UTC ]
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The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was. — D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature ¤ I. THE ROAD BLINKS IN ahead of Eric Ashby. He’s nodding out, but he recognizes... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-12-11 13:30:31 UTC ]
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In this episode, taped live at the Miami Book Fair, writer Jeff VanderMeer and editor Ann VanderMeer talk to Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell about editing The Big Book of Classic Fantasy anthology, historical understandings of fantasy, editing beyond... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-12-05 09:48:07 UTC ]
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Comic book creators search for ways to combat the rise of illegal digital sharing of their work. Continue reading at BBC World
[ BBC World | 2019-11-29 13:41:32 UTC ]
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Cultural Cross Sections Shohreh Laici Photo of Tehran by Xiquinho Silva / Flickr A writer in Tehran incapable of entering the US under the Muslim travel ban encounters Michelle Obama’s Becoming in a beauty salon. Reading the Farsi translation, she... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-11-26 14:55:39 UTC ]
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The list includes a mix of books written originally in Spanish and in translation. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-11-26 10:00:03 UTC ]
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The new Elena Ferrante is just one of the exciting novels in translation coming next year. Lara Feigel talks to the UK editors who are rediscovering classics and finding new audiencesThere are voices that speak to us across oceans and centuries with more intimacy than the people who surround us... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-11-23 08:00:49 UTC ]
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These inclusive children's books by women of color highlight awesome yet underrepresented communities like Sikh, indigenous, and Dominican. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2019-11-21 11:35:59 UTC ]
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Writers of literary fiction are supposed to disdain celebrity memoirs. They’re sucking up all the big advances and lowering the bar of what’s supposed to be Literature, right? But I’ve got a dirty reading secret. I love celebrity memoirs, particularly by standup comedians (and not just because... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-20 12:00:00 UTC ]
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That winter, the year Boogie turned 14, we got it in our heads that we could run away, leave Miami Beach and never come back. For months, I’d spent every night lost in a book, read whatever the librarian put in my hands, which usually meant books written by white men, about white people, for […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-11-20 09:47:43 UTC ]
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Shortly after the stunning US presidential election in 2016, a French journalist with a lifelong love for American literature seized the political moment to give American authors a platform to express themselves in what would become a 200-page magazine called America—in French. Fifteen days... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-11-15 09:48:32 UTC ]
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On May 17, 1973, the first witness to testify in the Senate’s Watergate hearings took the stand. It wasn’t former White House Counsel John Dean, or former Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, or the burglar James McCord, but Robert C. Odle, Jr., a “baby-faced” 29-year-old who had been the office... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2019-11-13 13:14:35 UTC ]
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There are many books written by successful business leaders, but this has to be one of the best when it comes to showcasing leadership and a company’s values. 1. Let My People Go Surfing, Yvon ChouinardRead Full Story Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2019-11-12 07:00:44 UTC ]
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ALMOST NO CONTEMPORARY literary fiction recounts the experience of getting an abortion. Perhaps this is because it can seem politically suspect to write in a nuanced way about its difficulties; opponents of legal abortion are all too eager to turn any mention of these difficulties into evidence... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-11-07 13:30:09 UTC ]
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While you're perusing the literary fiction shelves, create a haunting atmosphere with these eerie literary fiction titles for Halloween and beyond. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2019-10-31 10:40:16 UTC ]
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While literary fiction often sidesteps the climate crisis, eco-horror is filling the breach. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-10-19 09:00:04 UTC ]
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SEQUELS IN LITERARY FICTION are rare. There’s a risk in returning to characters whose arcs have been resolved or purposely left in ambiguity. A second book may rob readers of the pleasure of imagination, thus undoing some of the magic of the original novel. But sometimes a character so compels... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-10-16 17:00:57 UTC ]
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The founder and editor of literary magazine Strong Words on his appetite for tales of financial chicanery and why he won’t be returning to Jane AustenEd Needham is the editor of Strong Words, a magazine about books that he writes and edits on his own from his flat in Camden Town, a feat that has... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-10-05 17:00:51 UTC ]
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Simon & Schuster Children’s UK has signed a series of picture books written and illustrated by animator Steve Small. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-09-24 23:19:42 UTC ]
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