Happy Friday, Asymptote pals! Unless your habitation is rock-like, you’ve probably heard this week’s biggest, most high-stakes literary news: the Nobel Prize in Literature has been announced, and this year’s honors go to Belarusian Svetlana Alexievich, journalist and prose writer recognized for her meticulous, “polyphonic literature of witness.” Alexievich was at the top of the betting pools, but for those not in-the-know, the Nobel Prize is again an excellent opportunity to discover another author (often through translation!). Voices from Chernobyl, translated by Keith Gessen, is of particular interest. But much of her work—which voices the unvoiced—remains as-of-yet untranslated. Here’s a helpful primer to her work. READ MORE…
News
Weekly News Roundup, 9th October 2015: Noble Nobel!
This week's literary highlights from across the world.
Contributing editor Adrian West’s translation of Marianne Fritz’s The Weight of Things, which you might remember from the January 2014 issue of Asymptote, is now out from Dorothy. Adrian also recently wrote an essay about Marianne Fritz for the Paris Review blog, and a review of Michel Houellebecq’s Submission for the Quarterly Conversation. Furthermore, he had a story of his own published in gorse.
Drama editor Caridad Svich’s new play, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, has been featured in Broadway World. The play is based on the novel by Mario Vargas Llosa and directed by Jose Zayas. It premieres on October 10.
Contributing editor Ellen Elias-Bursac has been awarded The Mary Zirin Prize by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies. According to the judges’ citation, Ellen “serves a model for the important work, scholarly and socially, that committed independent scholars can achieve.” READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 2 October 2015: Genius, Granted
This week's literary highlights from across the world.
Happy Friday, joyous Asymptote-rs! You’ve probably already heard of some of this year’s MacArthur Fellows (or “geniuses,” as we like to call them)—like the Atlantic‘s Ta-Nehisi Coates (most recently the author of Between the World and Me), or 10:04’s Ben Lerner (will he write his next book about the award?)—but the full list, which includes classicists, poets, chemists, and puppetry artists, is certainly worth a look. READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup: 25 September 2015: Poets! Prizes! Judging! You!
This week's literary highlights from across the world.
Happy Friday, Asymptote! This week marked the excited announcement of the poetry judges for our very-special-favorite book award—Three Percent‘s Best Translated Book Award. In the poetry-judging lineup is the blog’s very own co-editor and GIF extraordinaire Katrine Øgaard Jensen, among many other qualified and interesting names. But Katrine’s got plenty of award-reading experience: she judged last year’s BTBA fiction prize, too. If you’re interested in BTBA-buzz (the best kind there is!), it’s worthwhile to catch up on some early, “On Location” 2016 musings, featuring French writer Anne Garréta, William Burroughs, and Czech phenom Bohumil Hrabal. READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 18th September 2015: National Book and We’re Awarded!
This week's literary highlights from across the world
Yay, it’s Friday! It’s a good Friday at that—this week marked the announcements for the American Literary Translators Association’s Lucien Stryk Prize shortlist. The Prize goes to literary translation from Asian languages, and with the exception of the Kalidasa, every single one of its nominees—both author and translator—have appeared on Asymptote‘s digital pages. We’re pretty chuffed about that—go ahead and check out the list or our archives, for what’s sure to be a star-studded reading experience (we recommend looking at Kim Hyesoon’s much-buzzed-about Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream to get you started).
This week was full of awards in general—the S.E.A. Write, or South East Asian Writers Award similarly announced its shortlist. Meanwhile, in other—Anglophone, more-or-less boring—prizes: the National Book Award announced its poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and young adult longlisted nominees—check them out! But we can’t say we aren’t a little baffled at what didn’t make the list (#Argonauts, anyone?). And in light of the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara, the London Review of Books offers a strongly-worded dissenting opinion.
Meanwhile, over at the Poetry Foundation, Robert Fernandez and Blake Bronson-Barrett describe what it’s like translating French surrealist Mallarmé (don’t you love this shop talk?). And just when it’s announced that another Seamus Heaney translation is slated to appear posthumously, the Irish poet’s last words are revealed to the public. And if we’re interested in peeking in/behind the writer’s veil, read Iranian writer, artist, and activist Shahirar Mandanipour’s interview with Little Village.
We reported last week on the terrible, repugnant Yi-Fen Chou debacle. This week, actual Asian poets continue to respond—and offer their work. Meanwhile, the New Republic suggests that cheating might be the only way to get published (say it isn’t so! It isn’t so at Asymptote). And it might be interesting to read Sherman Alexie’s private email to the group of poets accepted for Best American publication (“I’m sorry for this pseudonym bullshit,” he says).
Weekly News Roundup, 11 September 2015: Probably, Yes.
This week's literary highlights from across the world.
Hey Friday, hey Asymptote! Hope the week was all you’d hoped. It certainly wasn’t the week that the editors at Best American Poetry had hoped, as the literary Internet exploded with the revelation that a white, male, middle-aged poet named Michael Derrick Hudson had been publishing pseudonymously under the Chinese name Yi-Fen Chou. And a poem published under this name in Prairie Schooner had been selected for inclusion in the 2015 Best American Poets anthology. Sherman Alexie, the edition’s editor, defended the bad case of literary yellowface, to the chagrin of practically everyone with an empathetical bone. And then the real Yi-Fen Chou spoke up. And Jenny Zhang wrote a very smart thing. Side note: in light of all this depressing racial appropriation, it might be fun to test out the Asian-American Writers’ Workshop’s handy White Pen Name Generator). READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 4th September 2015: Ferrante Fever
This week's literary highlights from across the world.
Happiest of Fridays, all you Asymptote-rs!
We love just how global we are here at Asymptote—world travel at armchair cost! But it’s likely even our non-American readers will get a giggle at the ubiquity of U.S. slang in this helpful infographic: the United Slang of America. (I’m currently in Kybo country, though I haven’t the slightest idea what that is). Speaking of armchair travel, reading a book with an invented geography poses a particular conundrum for real-life cartographers stuck on facts: here, they show us how it’s done. READ MORE…
An excerpt from poetry editor Aditi Machado‘s translation of Farid Tali’s Prosopopoeia recently appeared in World Literature Today. The entire work is forthcoming from Action Books in 2016.
Over at his blog, contributing editor Adrian West joins Michael Orthofer in bemoaning the relative obscurity into which German writer Peter Weiss has fallen and argues that Weiss’s Aesthetics of Resistance might be the most radical novel of the twentieth century.
Drama editor Caridad Svich will be giving a talk entitled “Staging Place: Theatrical Crossings in Translation and Adaptation” at Mary Baldwin College’s Francis Auditorium at 7 PM on Sep 21.
Commissioning editor J.S. Tennant translated Enrique Vila-Matas’s “Writers from the Old Days” for The White Review recently.
Assistant editor Kara Billey Thordarson (K.T. Billey) had poems appear in Cosmonauts Avenue and Prelude. In August, she was named a finalist for the 2015 Pamet Prize from YesYes Books. Kara also read for Columbia University’s Studio A Arts radio show recently, sharing poems and talking philosophy of language, logic, and gender. READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 28th August 2015: Is It Stealing from the Amazon?
This week's literary highlights from across the world.
Happiest of Fridays, Asymptote pals. Did you hear about the good news? It’s more than Close Approximations, our superstar-big-bucks translation contest (judged by the likes of Michael Hofmann, Margaret Jull Costa, and Ottilie Mulzet). Might be worthwhile to check out the Journal‘s recruitment call, which harks far and wide and all across the globe. We’re even searching for fresh blood talent at the blog, where we’ll be hiring some assistant blog editors to pitch in with pitching stories, proofreading interviews, and all things bloggy. Even if you can’t dedicate the kinds of hours our volunteer staff does, tirelessly, be a pal and contribute to our second reader survey—we want Asymptote to listen to its readers, too. And pitch an ear to our latest podcast while you’re jetting off to wherever you’re jetting off to—it’s uncanny, and you won’t regret it. READ MORE…
3 Asymptote Announcements (You Don’t Want to Miss)
After announcing Close Approximations, our $4,500 translation contest, we're thrilled to share more exciting news!
As you might remember, we recently announced Close Approximations, our $4,500 translation contest judged by Michael Hofmann, Ottilie Mulzet, and Margaret Jull Costa. But we have more exciting news for you: Our podcast and annual reader survey are back! And to prepare for new ventures, we’re hoping to enlist new team members via our final recruitment drive of the year (deadline: 1 September 2015). Check out the details here: READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 14th August 2015: the Books You Read, the Books You Ban
This week's literary highlights from across the world.
Hey, happiest of Fridays, Asymptote readers! Hope you’re enjoying what’s now—or about to be—the second half of August. For our readers in the United States, that might include a road trip, and what’s more American than a jaunt on the Interstate, as in Vladimir Nabokov’s famed Lolita? Over at the Literary Review, Nabokov falls for America. Or just stay at home, invite friends, open a bottle of wine, and chitchat about your latest favorite read—somehow. What, even, is the social function of the novel?
In Ukraine, that dinner conversation might include a list of books that no one around the table has read—as the country’s recently released a list of 38 banned books, all of which hail from Russian publishers and are deemed “hate” books. The whole thing is rather suspect, especially coupled with news that a Russian publisher has released several pro-Putin tomes using Western-sounding names.
In Japan, everyone’s favorite Nobel point of speculation/runner/baseball fan/novelist Haruki Murakami has published an eight-part e-book release of responses to the questions he had been asked in a crowdsourced, massively hyped advice column earlier this year. Italian anonymous phenom Elena Ferrante is of a slightly different slant when it comes to self-promotion, perhaps: before publishing her debut novel, Troubling Love, in 1991, she “made a small bet” with herself that “books, once they are published, have no need of their authors.” But we’re frothing at the mouth to meet you!
Trivia—more or less. You may have read French surrealist Mallarmé in the English translation (which one?), but have you read English in Mallarmé, Peter Manson’s erasurist, collaborative response? And have you wondered what the great English bard William Shakespeare may have been or possibly was smoking?
Finally, if your novel isn’t taking off yet, blame the trailer. You just don’t find them like this anymore.
Weekly News Roundup, 7th August 2015: Nah Nah Nah NEA!
This week's literary highlights from across the world
Contributing editor Aamer Hussein was interviewed by Kindle Magazine about his latest short story collection, 37 Bridges.
Poetry editor Aditi Machado‘s translation of Farid Tali’s Prosopopoeia has been accepted by Action Books for publication in Fall 2016.
Contributing editor Antony Shugaar has not one but two translations scheduled for publication in August: Nobel laureate Dario Fo’s The Pope’s Daughter (Europa Editions) and Fausto Brizzi’s 100 Days of Happiness: A Novel (Penguin Random House).
Over at his blog, contributing editor Adrian West weighs in on Rainald Goetz winning the Büchner Prize 2015—a controversial choice—and makes a case for Goetz’s relevance.
Drama editor Caridad Svich was interviewed by Philadelphia Magazine on the dismaying lack of female-written works in theater. READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 31st July 2015: Book the Booker & Submit to Our Emerging Translators Contest
This week's literary highlights from across the world