The pioneering translator, scholar, literary historian, and poet Salma Khadra Jayyusi — the most prominent anthologist of Arabic literature in English translation and founder of PROTA, the Project for the Translation of Arabic– died yesterday in Amman, Jordan. She was 95. … Continue reading
Considering the toll it takes on me to construct a writing boiled down to within an inch of its life about something I think, punctuate it punctiliously, then figure out too late what I’ve said, much less thought, if anything, … Continue reading
Where I live, a powerful local official causes a contribution to be withheld from an organization planning a pride festival in the town square. The official does not wish the county’s name to be associated with a drag show, a … Continue reading
The novel… is the first in an Indian language to win the International Booker Prize, and the first in Hindi to even secure a nomination… [Translator Daisy Rockwell’s] work on the book showed “the small miracle of translation,” [Frank Wynne, … Continue reading
The small shops are sprouting where their readers are, in residential areas, keeping alive the rich literary scene that made Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital, one of the cities with the most bookstores per capita in the world. “Argentina may always … Continue reading
The world / was whole because / it shattered. When it shattered, / then we knew what it was. “Formaggio” is Italian for “cheese.” The poem so titled is in Louise Glück’s book Vita Nova. On first reading I experienced … Continue reading
If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? And what would you want to know?It seems to me that the author plays a kind of secondary role in this whole business of literature. Authors are … Continue reading
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And out comes a tenderly belabored prospect of dilapidation. Looking at a photograph I didn’t take, I painted a quaint tranche of unleveled-up Britain from the plein air of the shed I inhabit. Painting my two-bit canvases from photos lets … Continue reading
A trove of drawings by Franz Kafka was brought to light in 2019. They share, says Philip Oltermann, features with paintings Kafka describes in his fiction: “… men riding flying buckets, singing mice and creatures made of household detritus… dream-like … Continue reading
EthicalDative 
Paint What You Fear
When my dad died in 2013, his shed (now mine) was full of guns. I inherited his art supplies, so I took up painting again after a long hiatus. My subjects came to be things I was afraid of. The … Continue reading →