Posts filed under 'Irish Literature'

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

September 22, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, Heloisa Selles, and MARGENTO

The latest literary news from Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, and Spain!

This week, our team members bring us news from around the world, from worldbuilding at a conference in Canada to reflections on the ties between Ireland and Spain. Read on for more on a bilingual publication out of Hong Kong, and Irish press publishing literature from the Romanian diaspora, and more!

Heloisa Selles, Executive Assistant, reporting from Toronto, Canada

 It was the last Saturday of August when a crowd of speculative fiction lovers gathered to attend the AugurCon, in Toronto. It was the first in-person event promoted by Augur Magazine, a biannual publication that promotes Canadian and Indigenous voices writing fantasy, science fiction, and other uncommon forms of genre fiction. As a reader and an appreciator of the strange and unusual, I knew I had to be there.

As the afternoon went by—a mild, muggy breeze bringing spurts of rain and, consequently, people in and out of the venue—I noticed my perception of neighboring urban outlines changing, shaped by the imaginative perspectives on worldbuilding the conference highlighted. Author Larissa Lai, one of the participants of “The Speculative City” panel, spoke about utopia as more than the capacity to imagine something better (or as a concept on the flip side of pessimism), but as a continuous investigation that honors the function of the dream. What is better in the dream, and for whom? “The dream as we dream it may not come to pass,” she said, “but our dreams impinge on flows.” This lyrical statement about the ethics of creation reminded me of the proverb: “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.” In SFF, creating new visions of what the world could become is also a way to keep the door open for those who will come after you, writers and readers alike.

Besides the panels, Augur also organized workshop AMAs with leading professionals in the publishing industry. I missed some discussions due to the overlapping agenda—and an enthusiastic, boisterous crowd—but I liked what I saw. I found the deliberate choice of keeping statistics out of discussion rather curious, especially in light of how BookTok helped boost sales in 2022 and fantasy genres went up 26.5% in sales in the first half of 2023, according to Publisher Weekly. Another overlooked but crucial aspect of publishing speculative fiction is the importance of funding for writers. This topic was partially addressed by a workshop about grants, which detailed the eligibility criteria for the Toronto Arts Council (TAC) Writers Program. In the federal sphere, the 2021-26 Strategic Plan created by the Canada Council for the Arts delineates how it is investing $1.6B in grants to authors to support artistic and literary creation.

The day was long and busy. As I packed up my modest book haul at the end of the one-day event, marinating in thoughts about fictional worlds, I noticed an old yearning being rekindled, the promise of being wrapped up in a fantastic story growing inside me. Maybe that is the primordial role of speculative fiction: to help us cope with real life by allowing us to step out of it, even if just for a little bit. READ MORE…

In Conversation with Fuat Sevimay, Turkish translator of Finnegans Wake

January 14, 2016  |  in Interviews  |  by Derek Pyle and Sara Jewell

"[Joyce], the master builder, says something in so-called English, but the same word indicates something else if you read half of it in Gaelic."

Despite his relatively recent arrival in the Turkish literary world, Fuat Sevimay is a highly promising writer and translator. After graduating from Marmara University with a degree in business and working as a sales manager for two decades, he began writing in his spare time six years ago “just to get rid of boredom.”

Sevimay was encouraged to keep writing, however, because his work quickly began to garner awards. In 2014, his short story collection Ara Nağme won the Orhan Kemal Short Story Book Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in Turkey, and in 2015, his novel Grand Bazaar won the Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar Novel Prize. His novel AnarŞık was also adapted for the stage this year, premiering last month in Istanbul. A devoted father of two, Sevimay has also written numerous children’s books, including Haydar Paşa’nın Evi.

Sevimay has translated  two of Italo Svevo’s novels, Senilità and La Novelle del Buon Vecchio E Della Bella Fanciulla, from Italian. Sevimay has also translated Oscar Wilde’s 1891 essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” Pandora by Henry James, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the collection of Joyce’s essays entitled Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing. In 2015, Sevimay was the Translator-in-Residence at Trinity College Dublin, hosted by the Ireland Literature Exchange and the Centre for Literary Translation.

Over a course of emails we interviewed Sevimay about his current project, translating what may very well be the most complicated book ever written, James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.

***

Derek Pyle and Sara Jewell: Fuat, thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions. Let’s start with hearing a bit more about yourself. What is your background as a writer and translator?

Fuat Sevimay: To be frank, I never dreamed of becoming a writer or translator. Until six years ago, I had been working as a sales manager and was simply a good reader. Then I wrote a story just to get rid of my boredom. If I had a nice voice instead, I could try to sing but it would be a kind of torture for my friends. The story was not bad. I made some redactions and then sent it to a competition. Two months later, someone called me and told that my story was awarded. Let’s call it fate. Then I had novels, a short story collection, books for children and some translations published, including Portrait of the Artist and Joyce’s Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing. READ MORE…