Posts featuring Pema Tseden

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

Literature seeks to rectify, repair, and pave new ground in this week's dispatches.

As James Baldwin said; “It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” This week, our editors are reaffirming the ability of literature to overcome discrimination and unite people with a shared passion through words. In Madrid, the Woolf Pack open mic night has been celebrating womxn and LGBTQI+ writers, whilst in the Czech Republic, a workshop sparked lively discussion on modern Tibetan literature. Read on to find out more!

Paloma Reaño Hurtado, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Madrid

The Woolf Pack is an open mic night celebrated since September 2018 at Desperate Literature, a trilingual bookstore in the centre of Madrid. Everyone is invited to attend, but the mic is exclusively open to womxn (cis and trans) and LGBTQI+ identifying folk. The event echoes a similar initiative called Self-Ish, launched in Paris for the first time in May 2016.

Aiming to be a tribute to the womxn and queer writers who have overcome all kinds of obstacles to make their literature, The Woolf Pack is a homage to womxn and LGBT idols from different times and latitudes—hence the name of the event. It is, in sum, a sort of anti-macho literature night; each participant can share their own or any other author’s text, as long as it is another female/trans/nonbinary author. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

Awards, book sales, conferences, festivals—poetics in its varied forms span the globe in this week's news.

Our editors pull both national bodies of literature and international exchanges into focus this week with a melange of events alive with tribute, celebration, and solidarity. In Toronto, a wide ranging arts and culture festival bring Iranian New Wave poetry and theatre to its stages. Valencia Poetry Festival proves a worthy debut with enthralling performances, experiments, and urgent messages. Tibetan literature and academia is featured with a comprehensive translation of a classic Buddhist text and a rich anniversary conference. This week’s dispatches are not to be missed!

Poupeh Missaghi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from New York City

Tirgan Festival, a celebration of Iranian art and culture, is held between July 25 and 28 in Toronto, Canada. This year’s festival includes some fifty events with participation of two hundred thirty guests, including performers, musicians, writers and poets, scholars, and others.

One of the events is a tribute to Iranian New Wave poet Yadollah Royaï (born 1932). Currently based in Paris, Royaï is one of the founders of “espacementalisme,” a poetry style influenced by Husserl’s phenomenology. The event will include scholars Farzaneh Milani and Khatereh Sheibani, editor and journalist Hassan Zerehi, Tirgan CEO Mehrdad Ariannejad, and Yadollah Royaï himself.

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