Posts featuring MARGENTO

What’s New with the Crew? (Aug 2023)

Find out what our staff members have been up to when we’re not editing your favorite literary journal!

Editor-at-Large for Palestine Carol Khoury will be the guest editor of a special issue of the Jerusalem Quarterly, titled “Write-Minded: Jerusalem in Literature”; check out her call for submissions here or email her for further details.

Newsletter Editor Cody Siler published an essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books about  the impact of the American suspense writer Patricia Highsmith’s diaries on her critical reputation.

Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large for Romania & Moldova, chaired in June the 5th edition of #GraphPoem at Digital Humanities Summer Institute, a “data commoning” hyper-platform performance involving hundreds of participants and watched by thousands of viewers online.

Nonfiction Editor Ian Ross Singleton translated four poems by Marina Eskina for Barzakh.

M.L. Martin has a new translation of the pre-10 c. Anglo-Saxon queer, feminist poet in the latest issue of Cordite.

Assistant Editor Megan Sungyoon‘s translation of The Cheapest France in Town by Korean poet Seo Jung Hak is scheduled to be published by World Poetry Books in October 2023.

Blog Editor Meghan Racklin’s essay on sore throats as illness and as metaphor was published in Full Stop and her review of The Light Room by Kate Zambreno was featured in The Brooklyn Rail.

Assistant Editor (Fiction) Michelle Chan Schmidt published a review of Owlish by Dorothy Tse, translated from the Chinese by Natascha Bruce, in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.

Editor-at-Large for North Macedonia Sofija Popovska‘s Macedonian translation of the novella Im Kopf von Bruno Schulz by Maxim Biller was published in July by Makedonika Litera Press; additionally, “Thaumatropes”, a poetry collection she co-authored with Jonah Howell also appeared in July, published by Newcomer Press.

Copy Editor Urooj recently had two poems published in Gulmohur Quarterly‘s Issue 10, released in June 2023. They were also invited to share their poems at the Bangalore Poetry Festival, in Bangalore, India as one of four young, emerging poets in a panel called “Poems in Progress.”

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Interested in joining us behind the scenes? We’re still finalizing our mid-year recruitment drive—hurry and apply if you’d like to help power the world’s literature! 

What’s New with the Crew? (Nov 2022)

In addition to editing your favorite literary journal, Asymptote staff have been busy with publications this past quarter!

Philippine Editor-at-Large Alton Melvar M Dapanas’s lyric collage is included in Our Stories To Tell (Texas: Folkways Press, 2022), an anthology of essays on mental health, out now.

Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large for Romania and Moldova, has recently contributed, jointly with Raluca Tanasescu, a chapter on “Literary Translation in Electronic Literature and Digital Humanities” to the Bloomsbury anthology Translation Beyond Translation Studies and an article on “#GraphPoem: Holisme analytique-créatif, le genre D(H) et la performance informatique subversive” to the special issue on transmediality and convergence in literature of the journal Recherches & Travaux.

An essay, “Humor in the Dark,” by Ellen Elias-Bursac, Contributing Editor, was published in the journal Translation Review. It explored some of the strategies Elias-Bursac used when translating Dubravka Ugresic’s counterpoint of humor and trauma in her book of essays The Age of Skin.

Incoming Visual Editor Heather Green moderated a panel on “Word + Image,” featuring translator Alta L. Price and artists Verónica Gerber Bicecci and Abdulrahman Naanseh at the Center for the Art of Translation’s Day of Translation conference. She also recently reviewed poetry titles by Iman Mersal (tr. Robyn Cresswell), Shuri Kido (tr. Tomoyuki Endo and Forrest Gander), and frequent contributor Eugene Ostashevsky for the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Books.

Ian Ross Singleton, Nonfiction Editor, took part in a two-way interview with writer Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry for Punctured Lines, a blog on Post-Soviet literature. The two writers discussed their respective novels, Two Big Differences and The Orchard.

In September, José García Escobar, Editor-at-Large for the Central American region, published his translation of Solito, a memoir by Salvadoran-American poet Javier Zamora, with Penguin En Español. READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? (Nov 2021)

Who’s behind your favorite journal and what have they been up to? Here’s a glimpse!

After presenting a transmedia computational poem commissioned by RCI New York, Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large for Romania and Moldova, guest-edited a special issue of Interférences littéraires/Literaire interferenties on “Literature and/as (the) Digital.”

Educational Arm Assistant Katarzyna Bartoszyńska has two new online publications: a piece entitled “Modern Transit: A History of Feeling in the Polish People’s Republic” and a review of Doireann Ni Ghriofa’s A Ghost in the Throat.

Assistant Editor (Fiction) Laurel Taylor recently published an essay on radical translation practices in Mentor & Muse.

Assistant Editor (Poetry) M. L. Martin’s Theater of No Mistakes won the 2021 Rick Campbell Chapbook Award and is now available for purchase on the Anhinga Press website and through her own website.

Chief Executive Assistant Rachel Farmer has translated German author Katharina Bendixen’s short story “The Third Wolf” for the latest issue of Berlin-based SAND journal.

Assistant Editor Shawn Hoo’s poetry chapbook Of the Florids won the 2021 Diode Editions Chapbook Contest and is forthcoming in 2022. 

Editor-at-Large for India Suhasini Patni has been selected as the Toto Fellow for the Sangam House Residency. She will be in Bangalore in December working on a collection of short stories. 

Editor-at-Large for Vietnamese diaspora Thuy Dinh’s review of poet Victoria Chang’s Dear Memory was published in NPR in October.

In addition to being featured in the current issue, Assistant Editor (Poetry) Whitney DeVos’s translations of Nahua poet Martín Tonalmeyotl appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of Michigan Quarterly Review and, on behalf of Latin American Literature Today, in a chapbook commemorating the winners of the Whiting Foundation’s 2021 Literary Magazine Prize. 

Want to join our dynamic international team? We’re wrapping up our final recruitment drive of the year—hurry and submit an application today!

What’s New with the Crew? (Aug 2021)

In addition to editing your favorite literary journal, Asymptote staff are publishing books and winning awards!

After organizing a #GraphPoem computational poetry event that attracted hundreds of participants and thousands of viewers at DHSI 2021, Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large for Romania and Moldova, is in the process of collaboratively starting a Digital Literature Lab at the Royal Library of Belgium on a FED-tWIN grant involving Université catholique de Louvain.

Chinese Social Media Manager Jiaoyang Li has received a China-Scotland Digital Collaboration Grant from the British Council and the City Artist Corps Grant from New York Foundation for the Arts to work on a series of community based literary events and workshops.

Assistant Director of Outreach Ka Man Chung’s English translation of Over the Left Bank of the River by Chung Wenyin has been awarded a translation and publication grant by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture. The work is expected to be released by Serenity International in 2022.

Educational Arm Assistant Katarzyna Bartoszyńska’s new book Estranging the Novel: Poland, Ireland, and Theories of World Literature has just been published this month by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Director of the Educational Arm Kent Kosack has a new short craft essay on the retrospective narration in J.D. Salinger’s “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period” up at Fiction Writers Review.

Assistant Editor (Poetry) M.L. Martin’s collection of ekphrastic prose poems, Theater of No Mistakes, won the 2021 Rick Campbell Chapbook Award, and will be published later this year with Anhinga Press (USA). In addition, her anti-translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem by the anonymous, pre-10th c. proto-feminist, Wulf & Eadwacer, was named a finalist for CSU’s 2021 Lighthouse Poetry Series (USA). READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? (February 2021)

From writing columns to publishing translations, we’ve been keeping busy!

Assistant Editor (Fiction) Andreea Scridon will have a poetry pamphlet published in 2022 with Broken Sleep Books; in addition, she will be featured in Art and Letters’ anthology 14 International Younger Poets‚ forthcoming this summer.

Copy Editor Anna Aresi has begun writing a monthly column on children’s literature in translation for Italian kid lit blog Scaffale Basso.

Nonfiction Editor Bassam Sidiki published a poem in Counterlock Journal.

Chamini Kulathunga, Editor-at-Large for Sri Lanka, published her interview with Liyanage Amarakeerthi on Hopscotch Translation on February 9, 2021.

Jacqueline Leung, Editor-at-Large for Hong Kong, has joined Cicada, a new literary magazine featuring nuanced and inclusive writing; it also welcomes translations.

Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large for Romania & Moldova, has initiated an internationally funded project on digital literacy, DigiLiBeRo, spearheaded together with Ana Iolanda Voda and Roxana Patras.  READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? (November 2020)

Find out what our staff members have been up to when we’re not editing your favorite literary journal!

Editor-at-Large for Vietnam Thuy Dinh was recently a writer-in-residence at the Woodlawn Plantation/Pope-Leighey House in Alexandria, Virginia—a National Trust historic site featuring a 18th century Georgian Mansion and a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Her essay, “Schrödinger Catwalk, or A Tour in Opposites” on the meaning of hyphens, butler mirrors, Wright’s corridors, and her own refugee experience was published on September 11 here.

Assistant Director of the Educational Arm Kent Kosack has a new essays up in Pidgeonholes and Critical Read.

Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large for Romania & Moldova, contributed (jointly with his international academic team) an article on “A-poetic Technology. #GraphPoem and the Social Function of Computational Performance” to the latest issue of the peer-reviewed journal Digital Humanities Benelux.

Editor-at-Large for Slovakia Julia Sherwood’s recent co-translation with Peter Sherwood of Czech writer Alena Mornštajnová’s Hana was released by Parthian Books on October 1. She recently spoke with Trafika Europe Radio on this latest publication.

Read more news from the staff:

What’s New with the Crew? (May 2020)

From hypermedia performances to publications, Asymptote staff have been keeping busy—even under lockdown!

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow’s co-translation, with Sean T. Reynolds, of Gustave Roud’s “Air of Solitude” followed by “Requiem” is now out with Seagull Books.

Executive Assistant Austyn Wohlers, who has just been admitted into Notre Dame’s MFA program in Fiction, recently published a story, “Lila,” in Short Fiction.

Editor-at-large for Romania and Moldova Chris Tanasescu (aka MARGENTO) will be presenting in late May a Twitter-based (@GraphPoem) hypermedia performance preview of a computationally assembled Belgian poetry anthology he is editing in French and in English translation and in early June an interactive coding computational poetry performance at Digital Humanities Summer Institute 2020.

Contributing Editor Ellen Elias-Bursać’s translation of Robert Perišić’s novel No-Signal Area, out recently with Seven Stories Press, was reviewed by Ken Kalfus in The New York Times.  

Editor-at-large for Guatemala José García recently published the final instalment of a four-parter about the migrant caravan at The Evergreen Review. Click here, here, here, and here for the full series.

Editor-at-large for Slovakia Julia Sherwood recently translated an essay by Czech journalist Apolena Rychlíková for the anthology Europa28: Writing by Women on the Future of Europe published by Comma Press in March 2020.

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Section Editors’ Highlights: Spring 2020

Our section editors guide you through the riches of our Spring 2020 issue!

Our Spring 2020 issue has arrived amidst a rising desire for unity and community. As we seek new sights from views made familiar by isolation, Asymptote is proud to have gathered some of the most vivid and singular works from literary talents from thirty countries, so that we may all benefit from the vitality of their distinct imaginings and realities. Here, our section editors share their favourites and guide you around this edition’s abundance of ideas and inventions.

From Lee Yew Leong, Fiction and Galician Poetry Feature Editor:

If you enjoyed watching Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, you’ll probably love “Red Ivory” by Italian writer Matteo Meschiari from the new issue: like the film, it’s a survival tale set in the extreme cold (in the Siberian permafrost, to be specific), riveting in its depiction of the elements, narrated urgently with brilliant flashes of lyricism—including one electric moment of human contact collapsing 12,000 years. By the end, it’s also a möbius strip of a story posing big existential questions. (Don’t miss the edifying note by emerging translator Enrico Cioni, who did an amazing job rendering the story.) The omniscient narrator of Mirza Athar Baig‘s “Junkshop” transports us similarly through history—this time centering around the objects of a contemporary junkshop—infusing an everyday scene with wonder at just how much we don’t know. Many delights abound in the Galician Poetry Feature headlined by Manuel Rivas, Chus Pato, and Alba Cid (translated by Jacob Rogers, who also helped put together the Feature), but be sure to acquaint yourself with Luz Pozo Garza, one of Galicia’s literary greats, who passed away at age 97 less than a week after the release of the issue. In the selection that translator Kathleen March presented, she used cadences of the canticle and other musical forms to sing of an ecstatic yet bittersweet love for an evanescent world.

From Henry Ace Knight, Interviews Editor: 

Kamila Hladíková’s conversation with Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser for the Spring issue’s interview section centers on the precariousness of Tibetan cultural memory and the poet’s resistance to its wholesale erasure. Citing Milan Kundera and Edward Said, Woeser suggests that the survival of marginalized collective identity is incumbent upon the insistence of individual eyewitness memory and testimony. “The history of a nation consists of the personal histories of its people,” she writes. “Descartes said, ‘I think, therefore I am’; but in Tibet, it should be, ‘I remember, therefore we are.’”

From Varun Nayar, Nonfiction Editor: 

Following the footsteps of the great Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō, Durian Sukegawa writes about a journey he made in 2012, traversing a landscape reshaped by the earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster the year before. Alison Watts’s vivid translation of Sukegawa’s written account of this journey acquaints us with the personal and political stakes of living in post-Fukushima Japan. Part travelogue, part political meditation, Sukegawa’s writing pairs the beauty of the Japanese landscape with the ugliness of government negligence. At the heart of this piece is a desire to bear witness to the lives rendered invisible in the eyes of the mainstream media and the country’s disaster management apparatus. In its sober reflection of the human cost of events still fresh in Japan’s collective memory, Sukegawa’s piece also conjures an eerie relation to the current pandemic we’re living through.  READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? (Nov 2019)

From being appointed President of ALTA to launching new poetry collections, Asymptote staff have been dazzling the world!

Is Asymptote edited anonymously? That was what someone seemed to suggest recently on Twitter—as if we were a bunch of bots. As a matter of fact, our editor-in-chief—and only full-time team member—is based in Taipei (although he made an appearance in a London translation symposium recently, which you can read about below), where he collaborates with 90+ team members from around the globe. Being virtual means our team members are often active (and physically present) literary citizens in other arenas. For evidence, look no further than this quarterly update celebrating our staff’s recent accomplishments.

Chris Tanasescu (aka MARGENTO, editor-at-large for Romania & Moldova) jointly presented with Diana Inkpen a paper on “Poetry beyond Poetry: Applying GraphPoem Outcomes in DH, NLP, and Performance” at DH Benelux 2019.

Please join us in congratulating Ellen Elias-Bursać, contributing editor, appointed to President of the American Literary Translators Association on Nov 7.

Editor-at large for Slovakia Julia Sherwood‘s most recent co-translations with Peter Sherwood Big Love by Balla and The Night Circus and Other Stories by Ursula Kovalyk were recently reviewed in The London Magazine by assistant editor Andreea Scridon.

José García Escobar, editor-at-large for Central America, published the first installment in a four-part series about last year’s migrant caravan at the Evergreen Review on Oct 30. READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

See how the unstoppable Asymptote crew is finishing up 2018!

As the year draws to a close, Asymptote staff members have been as busy as ever. Here is a selection of what our colleagues have been up to, from reviews written, to panels spoken on, and new blogs too.

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow contributed a review, “Mystery and Surprise: Two Chinese Poets,” and translations of Swiss poet and photographer Gustave Roud, to the 88th edition of Plume.

Senior Editor (Chinese) Chenxin Jiang discussed the political power of literary translation as part of a conference at the Centre d’études de la traduction at Paris VII.

Romania & Moldova Editor-at-Large Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO jointly (along with Raluca Tanasescu) contributed a book chapter entitled “Translator networks of networks in digital space: The case of Asymptote Journal” to the hot-off-the-press Complexity Thinking in Translation Studies from Routledge (eds. Kobus Marais & Reine Meylaerts).

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What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

Keep up with our staff's impressive literary news as the summer comes to a close!

As we celebrate Asymptote‘s 30 issues in September, join us in congratulating our team members who also kept themselves busy with spreading our love of translation and literature. Take a look at this list and see where else we are bringing you the latest and the best of the literary world.

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow has released a new collection of poetry, Appetites, with MadHat Press.

Drama Editor Caridad Svich received the 2018 Ellen Stewart Award for Career Achievement in Professional Theatre from ATHE (Association of Theatre in Higher Education), and she has also been awarded a Tanne Foundation Award.

Assistant Interviews Editor Claire Jacobson had her translation of a short story by Mortada Gzar published by Words Without Borders.

Contributing Editor Ellen Elias-Bursac will participate in the Boston Translators Group’s (aka Dolet’s) International Translation Day/Month on 27 September at Cambridge Public Library.

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What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

Touch base with our industrious team's literary achievements as we approach the halfway mark of 2018!

We have such an amazing group of creative people over here at Asymptote. Check out some of our recent news and stay tuned for more of the international literature you love!

Poetry Editor Aditi Machado’s book of poetry, Some Beheadings, has been awarded The Believer Poetry Award.

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow has published an article in French on the creative imagination in Apollinaire’s Méditations esthétiques in Littérature’s 190th edition.

Editor-at-Large for Romania & Moldova Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO delivered a computational poetry paper at a major Artificial Intelligence conference, presented a Digital Humanities paper at Congress2018, and has flown to Europe to launch a computationally assembled poetry anthology.

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What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

What is our literary powerhouse of a crew up to this May? Read on to find out!

We have such an amazing group of creative people over here at Asymptote. Check out some of our recent news and stay tuned for more of the international literature you love!

Poetry Editor Aditi Machado‘s poem “Epistle” appeared in Boston Review, and another poem of hers, “Archaic”, was reprinted by the Poetry Society of America.

From May 1 – 5, Romania and Moldova Editor-at-Large Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO organized DHSITE, a bilingual event introducing new computing technologies and their uses in education and research, at the University of Ottawa. Later this month, he will present a paper at the Kanada Koncrete poetry conference in the same school.

Both Assistant Editor Lizzie Buehler and Blog Editor David Smith have accepted offers to attend the University of Iowa’s Literary Translation MFA this coming fall. David also wrote a review of an early Jon Fosse novel, Boathouse, for Reading in Translation.

Indonesia Editor-at-Large Norman Erikson Pasaribu spoke with Indonesian writer Eka Kurniawan about his conception of horror, the diversity of Indonesian literature, and the rebirth of the New Order in Mekong Review.

Assistant Managing Editor Sam Carter published an essay at Music & Literature on Jorge Barón Biza’s The Desert and Its Seed.

Blog Editor Sarah Booker‘s translation of Cristina Rivera Garza’s The Iliac Crest (Feminist Press and And Other Stories) was included on the long list for the Best Translated Book Award.

Singapore Editor-at-Large Theophilus Kwek contributed work to Carcanet Press’s latest New Poetries anthology. He also published a piece in The Straits Times comparing citizenship opportunities in the UK (where he was able to vote in the European Union referendum as a Commonwealth citizen) and Singapore.

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For more news from the Asymptote blog:

What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

From launching journals to winning literary prizes, our team has had a wonderful month!

Incoming Communications Manager Alexander Dickow has recently received tenure from the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech. He currently serves as Assistant Professor of French.

Spanish Social Media Manager Arthur Dixon has launched the second issue of Latin American Literature Today, a new journal where he serves as Managing Editor and Translator.

Drama Editor Caridad Svich has been named one of 2017’s O’Neill Finalists at the National Playwrights Conference for her play, Town Hall.

Romania and Moldova Editor-at-Large Chris Tanasescu (MARGENTO) has launched a book titled poetryartexchange, co-authored with 8 other British and Romanian poets and artists, at the Birmingham Literary Festival. The project is a collaboration between University of Bucharest Press and Centrala, and will see more events in London and Birmingham in May through early June.

Contributing Editor Ellen Elias-Bursac will speak alongside poets Athena Farrokhzad and Noemi Jaffe, and fellow translators Jennifer Hayashida and Julia Sanches, on a panel entitled ‘Corrosive Power’ at PEN America’s World Voices Festival.

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