July 1st, 2011 § § permalink
Josip Novakovich on nostalgia:
I began to write stories in the States out of nostalgia when I dodged the Yugoslav Federal Army and could not go home. Nostos-algia, the Greek components mean return + pain: the pain that drives you to return. But I could not return, because in addition to the politics, time banned me. I missed the times and places and people of my boyhood. I thought I could stay in touch at least with the people and the place, if not the time. (VIA)
This is from Apricots from Chernobyl, a collection of short stories on life in Yugoslavia, of which author and poet Fred Chappell said the following: “Calmly, almost diffidently, Josip Novakovich displays for us the wrenching despair that results from the dissolution of societies. These pages are powerful and important.”
(No July lit in translation events!)
June 6th, 2011 § § permalink
June 8 · 7:00 pm
Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA
Celebrate the first issue of the new literary magazine The Common with Ilan Stavans and Sabina Murray. The Common is published twice a year from Amherst College.
Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Profession in Latin American and Latino Culture, Amherst College. Most recently, he edited FSG Book of 20th Century Latin American Poetry.
Sabina Murray grew up in Australia and the Philippines and is currently a member of the MFA faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of Slow Burn, A Carnivore’s Inquiry, Forgery, and The Caprices, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
June 15 · 7:00 pm
Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA
Not a book in translation but of interest to Nabokov fans. Hear Leslie Daniels read from her memoir Cleaning Nabokov’s House:
Guided only by her intense inner voice and a unique entrepreneurial vision, Barb begins to collect the scattered pieces of her life. She moves into a house once occupied by Vladimir Nabokov, author of the controversial masterpiece Lolita, and discovers a manuscript that may be his lost work. As her journey gathers momentum, Barb deepens a connection with her new world, discovering resources in her community and in herself that no one had anticipated. Written in elegant prose with touches of sharp humor and wit, Cleaning Nabokov’s House offers a new vision of modern love and a fervent reminder that it is never too late to find faith in our truest selves.
June 15 · 7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, MA
Head on over to the Brookline Booksmith for Spanning The Globe: Spanish Voices, a reading and discussion with translators Mark Schafer, Francisca González Arias, and Donald Wellman.
June 25 · 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
Harvard Bookstore, Cambridge, MA
Put on comfortable sneakers and bring empty bags for the Harvard Bookstore’s semiannual warehouse sale. ‘Nuff said.
May 1st, 2011 § § permalink
Today is the final day of the PEN World Voices Festival but it isn’t the last chance for you to see the festival participants. From May 1 to 13, Pen World will go on tour to to select cities in the US. Luckily for me, one of the pit stops will be at the Harvard Book Store on May 4, 7pm, which will host a discussion moderated by Richard Hoffman, chair of PEN/New England, with writers Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Daniel Orozco, Leila Aboulela, and Elif Shafak.
Check the schedule to see if PEN World Voices Festival Tour will be making stops in your city.
April 30th, 2011 § § permalink
While I wish I could be there in the flesh, I have to say that the organizers of this year’s PEN World Voices have done a great job bringing the events to their non-NYer fans.
Exhibit A: The literary mixtapes.
Exhibit B: Podcasts from the week’s events
Exhibit C: World Voices bloggers!
April 29th, 2011 § § permalink
Things to do before the Best Translated Book Awards are announced tonight at 8:45 pm EST:
- Listen to the newly-launched Three Percent Podcast with Chad Post and Tom Roberge of New Directions Publishing. This week, “they talk about Vladimir Sorokin (his “Siberian earthf***ers” and how he’s not really like Bolano), the overratedness of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the Hungarian author Laszlo Krashnahorkai.”
- Attend an awesome event. Consult the schedule.
- Download today’s literary mixtape.
April 28th, 2011 § § permalink
So you don’t live in New York City and can’t make it to the daily events. Chin up, kiddo, ’cause PEN World has given you the next best thing: a literary mixtape with samples by participants!
Instructions: click on the version you want to download. Open files directly in iPhone or iPad, or drag and drop the downloaded file from your desktop computer to your e-reading device. Enjoy. (e-books created with Instapaper)
Monday: .mobi (for Kindle) | .epub (for iPad, iPhone, Nook, most other e-readers). Includes work from Malcolm Gladwell, Molly Crabapple, Pierre Guyotat, Arnon Grunberg, and Hervé Le Tellier.
Tuesday: .mobi (for Kindle) | .epub (for iPad, iPhone, Nook, most other e-readers). Includes work from Ludovic Debeurme, Kjersti Skomsvold, Yusef Komunyakaa, Sandro Veronesi, and Carsten Jensen.
Wednesday: .mobi (for Kindle) | .epub (for iPad, iPhone, Nook, most other e-readers). Includes work from Sarah Schulman, Carmen Boullosa, Abdellah Taïa, Laurence Cossé, and Abdelkader Benali.
Thursday: .mobi (for Kindle) | .epub (for iPad, iPhone, Nook, most other e-readers). Includes work from Edmund White, Najat El Hachmi, Margaret Mazzantini, Elif Shafak, Peter Lerangis, and Kyung-sook Shin.
April 26th, 2011 § § permalink
Amuse me as I live vicariously through those who are able to attend the PEN World Voices Festival.
9:00 am to 5:00 pm – Day job. Guzzle coffee.
12:00 pm to 1:30 – Lunch break! Pop over to La Maison Française for a lunchtime conversation between graphic novelist Ludovic Debeurme and Kiersti Annesdatter Skomsvold. Lit and lunch, folks. Lit and lunch. Details.
5:00 pm – Solidarity, sister. Join Hungarian artists, journalists, and intellectuals at the Greenwich House Music School as they discuss the effect of the last Hungarian election on the creative community.
7:00 pm – A Global Piano and Literary Salon: From Russia with Love at The Jerome L. Greene Space at WNYC. Music, books, and wine. Readings by Russia’s up-and-comers Igor Belov and Ksenia Shcherbino.
7:00 pm – Don’t worry, you probably couldn’t have afforded the 2011 PEN Literary Gala. At $1000 per ticket, you’re better off at the Piano Salon or eating a falafel before the David Foster Wallace event (7:30).
10:30 pm – Get some shut-eye. You’re not in college anymore and tomorrow’s a big day!
April 25th, 2011 § § permalink
April 3rd, 2011 § § permalink
April 4 · 7:30 pm
Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown, MA
Howard Jacobson, author of Booker Award winning The Finkler Question, will join Ben Birnbaum at the Arsenal Center for the Arts. Admission: $45 for Patron or $28 for non-members.
April 5 · 7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, MA
Paolo Giordano and Alexi Zentner will discuss their novels (or Daring Debuts, as the BB calls them), The Solitude of Prime Numbers and Touch. Free admission.
April 5 · 7:00 pm
Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, New York, NY
Housing Works will be hosting the Vilcek Foundation Q&A with Dinaw Mengestu, Ilya Kaminsky, Tea Obreht, Vu Tran, and Simon Van Booy. Go to this event! Dinaw Mengestu, winner of the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature, read at the Brookline Booksmith last fall and proved to be a very engaging and entertaining reader. If you’ve been living under a rock, Tea Obreht has been receiving rave reviews for her debut The Tiger’s Wife. So if your alternative is sitting alone in a bar (not a bad thing) or vege-ing out on the couch (no judgement here), perhaps you should pop over to Housing Works for a little social/lit time. Not a bad way to spend a Tuesday evening, I say. Free admission.
About the award:
The Vilcek Prize is awarded annually to individuals born abroad who have made lasting contributions to society in the United States through extraordinary achievement in biomedical research or arts and letters. Two prizes are awarded each year, one in biomedical research and one in the arts or humanities, in a field designated annually by the Foundation, including fine art, architecture, music, drama, literature and others.
April 8 · 3:00 pm
Harvard Book Store, Boston, MA
Tove Jansson fans, stop by the Harvard Bookstore this Friday to hear Thomas Teal speak of his work. He has translated Fair Play, The Summer Book, and Sun City from the Swedish. Free admission.
April 26 · 7:00 pm
Goethe-Institute Boston, Boston, MA
Thomas Pletzinger, author of Funeral for a Dog, will be reading at the Goethe-Institute Boston. The New York Times review for Funeral started with this: “Thomas Pletzinger’s first novel, “Funeral for a Dog,” is about sex, love, Brazil, a form of ménage-à-trois, children’s books, Finland, dogs, Ping-Pong, New York — in short, the good things.” So if you like to read about any of those things, don’t miss this event! This will be in German and in English. Free admission.
{I had no clue that the Goethe-Institute had a Boston office until I saw this event. Good riddance!}
And last but certainly not least:
April 25 to May · Various times and venues
New York, NY
There are too many events to cover here so mozy on over to PEN’s website to peruse the broad range of topics that will be covered at the festival. I won’t be able to make any of the events since I’m traveling for work that weekend so if you attend, please let me know your thoughts! Free admission and ticketed events.
March 1st, 2011 § Comments Off § permalink
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“Desert” by Mike_fleming, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license
March 2 · 7:00 pm
McNally Jackson Books, New York, NY
Translator Bill Johnson and HMH Associate Editor Sal Robinson are kicking off The Bridge/El Puente, a literature in translation reading series, with Spanish-language translators Edith Grossman & Steve Dolph at McNally Jackson Books. Edith Grossman has translated Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, among others.
Steve Dolph is the founding editor of Calque, a journal of literature in translation. He has translated Juan José Saer’s The Sixty-Five Years of Washington and two other Saer titles which are forthcoming from Open Letter Books.
About The Bridge:
The Bridge is the first independent reading and discussion series in New York City devoted to literary translation. It aims to promote public awareness about the art of translation by serving as a regular venue for readings, by both well-established and emerging translators and authors, and discussions on a range of issues related to the art and practice of translation. For regular information on our upcoming events, please visit our Facebook page and join our mailing list by emailing “subscribe” to: thebridgeseries@gmail.com.
March 3 · 6:30 pm
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
As part of The Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Celebrity Lectures, Julia Alvarez will be at The Museum of Fine Arts to talk about her evolution as a writer and multiculturalism. There will be a signing at the MFA Bookstore immediately following the lecture.
$28 members/$35 non-members
This event will launch the MFA Fiesta celebration, a month-long celebration of Latino-American art and culture. Details and events info here.
March 13 · 5:00 pm
Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA
Karen Tei Yamashita! KTY’s I Hotel garnered lots of critical attention in 2010 and was shortlisted for the National Book Award.
Dazzling and ambitious, this hip, multi-voiced fusion of prose, playwriting, graphic art, and philosophy spins an epic tale of America’s struggle for civil rights as it played out in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Divided into ten novellas, one for each year, I Hotel begins in 1968, when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, students took to the streets, the Vietnam War raged, and cities burned.
This event is not to be missed.
March 23 · 7:00 pm
Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, MA
Entrepreneurship activist and journalist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon will be at the Harvard Book Store to talk about her first book, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe.
The life Kamila Sidiqi had known changed overnight when the Taliban seized control of the city of Kabul. After receiving a teaching degree during the civil war—a rare achievement for any Afghan woman—Kamila was subsequently banned from school and confined to her home. When her father and brother were forced to flee the city, Kamila became the sole breadwinner for her five siblings. Armed only with grit and determination, she picked up a needle and thread and created a thriving business of her own.
The Dressmaker of Khair Khana tells story of this unlikely entrepreneur who mobilized her community under the Taliban. Former ABC News reporter Gayle Tzemach Lemmon spent years on the ground reporting Kamila’s story, and the result is an unusually intimate and unsanitized look at the daily lives of women in Afghanistan. These women are not victims; they are the glue that holds families together; they are the backbone and the heart of their nation.
