Hard at work on Asymptote’s upcoming issue, our editors still have time to write, publish, translate, and organize conferences and plays. Read the thrilling and bizarre ruminations of Forrest Gump’s Slovakian evil twin, an essay on why loss in translation is inevitable and okay, and find out what to do in Seattle now that AWP has ended!
News
Asymptote Never Sleeps: Editor News Roundup
The latest from Asymptote's team of international editors
Weekly Roundup, 28th February 2014: Asymptote in Seattle, Anti-Anachronism-Bot, Socrates or Seacrest?
A look at some of the most important literary news of the past week
If you are anywhere near the Pacific Northwest, head on over to Asymptote’s booth at the AWP, or the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in Seattle, Washington. Good news is that after widespread outcry, the conference is open to the bookish riffraff public, which means you should absolutely come check out the literati—including our managing editor Tara FitzGerald and Central Asia editor-at-large Alex Cigale! They’ll be answering your questions and raffling away translated goodies. READ MORE…
An Interview with Javier Molea
"Basically, no one knows what great Latin American writers are teaching in New York."
Since beginning at McNally Jackson ten years ago, Javier Molea has stretched his title as bookseller to its absolute limits. In the process, he has positioned himself firmly at the crux of a burgeoning New York Spanish-language literary community. READ MORE…
Asymptote at AWP
If you're going to AWP, drop by and say hi. Pssst...if you are a past contributor, we've got a surprise for you!
Attention literature lovers: the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) is holding its Annual Conference and Bookfair this year in Seattle, Washington, and your favorite literature journal Asymptote will make its first AWP appearance!
I just keep on repeating his name, I call out to him, I call him on the phone, as if he would answer. I have no words. The demons of death had been hovering around Szilárd for a long time. I was afraid of them at times—he certainly was not. He lived with them, but he did not feed them. READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 21st February 2014: Translation is the prize!
A look at some of the most important literary news this past week
This week in literary prizewinning witnessed what seems like yet another entry in the Good, the Bad, and the downright Strange. While we can’t really complain about the fact that the Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists include more translations than the average translation-phobic English-language book prizes, the Times omitted to mention the translators’ names—or the fact that the books were translations themselves.
Our past contributors have been busy! Publishing new work, organizing translation contests, accepting prizes and writing poetry and articles (read it all today, right this instant!)—the only thing they haven’t done is procrastinate.
In the opening chapter of his Sanskrit masterpiece, the Vikramāṅkadevacarita, Bilhaṇa, a Kashmiri poet living in 12th century Karnataka, writes:
Where is the fame of those kings who do not have eminent poets on either side?
How many kings have come and gone from the earth?
Nobody even knows their names!
A few years ago, I was walking with my wife and daughter up a steep narrow cobblestone street in the medieval center of Viterbo, a town just north of Rome that for many centuries was a papal summer capital. I noticed a tall man dressed aggressively for success, his clothing put together impeccably with a ferocity that struck me as uniquely Italian. He surveyed the passing strollers with an air of command from the doorway of a storefront papered with posters for Silvio Berlusconi’s political party, Forza Italia, a movement named after a soccer cheer. I nudged my wife and pointed to the man: she nodded, but I sensed she hadn’t seen what I had. I think you have to live in a country for a decade to see it through local eyes. Even today it’s hard to convey just what Berlusconi and his followers represent in Italy, unless you’ve lived through it. READ MORE…
Weekly news Roundup, 14th February 2014: NASA fiction, Vietnamese pioneering, The (funny) Hummus
A look at some of the most important literary news this past week
We’ve got an ambiguous relationship with today’s rosy-hued holiday. If you choose to partake without requisite romantic partner, express self-love by treating yourself to books! There’s nothing dreamier than cozying up with a reading list inspired by former Asymptote contributor and (according to Susan Sontag) “master of the apocalypse” Hungarian László Krasznahorkai. If a trip down memory lane with the likes of Kafka, Krudy, and Bernhard doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, don’t fret: you could catch up on Norwegian memoirist Karl Ove Knaussgaard’s musings anticipating the English-language release of the third installment to his epic autobiographical novel, My Struggle (and read a sneak peek here). Austrian author Stefan Zweig’s work has been largely overlooked, but that may change soon thanks to hipster filmmaker Wes Anderson’s upcoming The Grand Budapest Hotel. If none of these options sound sufficiently enticing, go on a literary date with nostalgia: before he was a big-name writer, Japanese author Haruki Murakami was proprietor of a swanky jazz club. READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 7th February 2014: Sochi scandals, Library changes, Humans and their hometowns
A look at some of the most important literary news this past week
The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi blast off in just a few short hours—but despite transcontinental fanfare, Russia’s severe censorship and anti-homosexuality laws have already (rather predictably) overshadowed this year’s Games. Over 200 authors have signed a petition with the international PEN Center, including the likes of Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, and Günter Grass, in an open letter condemning Putin’s recently passed gay propaganda and blasphemy laws. In Guernica, an interview with investigative journalist Masha Gessen on Russia’s shrinking public space and the “personal catastrophe” of self-imposed exile. Masha Gessen edited OR Books’ recently published Gay Propaganda: Russian love Stories, putting faces to those affected by the oppression (read excerpts here). Amid political controversy, the PEN Center brings light to an often-overlooked element of contemporary Russia: what’s the literary scene like today? We’ll give you a primer: check out three contemporary Russian women poets or ten wonderful Russian novels you probably haven’t read yet.
It’s time for Asymptote’s monthly community news roundup, featuring our fantastic editors’ latest accomplishments. Learn what Croatian novel to read this weekend, what to do Friday night in Philadelphia, where to catch a play set in neo-Elizabethan Appalachia, and who is Asymptote’s Guest Artist for the April issue… READ MORE…
Three days of national mourning were declared in Argentina to commemorate the life of poet Juan Gelman, who passed away at eighty-three on Tuesday, January 14th in Mexico City. Silvina Friera of Pagina/12 remembered the Argentine poet’s great contribution to Spanish literature, stating “we have lost a man who transformed wounds into memorable verses…an untamable voice, so close and so beloved, whose deep cadence crackled with an elegant and playful irony.” READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 24th January 2014: Overrating American literature, Libraries in flux, Ironical semicolons
A look at some of the most important literary news this past week
Xiaolu Guo’s got a bone to pick with American publishers. At a panel called “the Global Novel” at the Jaipur International Literary Festival, she (now-famously) remarked, “American literature is massively overrated,” and it was this week’s grumble heard ‘round the literary world. She has got some very good points—here’s the discussion in full—but that’s not the whole story. Via Three Percent, a rant in response. READ MORE…