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1 week ago | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Nathalie Handal |Carmen Boullosa |Rafael Pérez Gay |Nina Perrotta
If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains. —Italo Calvino, Invisible CitiesCan you describe the mood of El Paso as you feel/see it? First, what is visible: the lavish expanse of light. Light on the stone benches. Light on the slopes of the mountains surrounding the city.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Nina Perrotta
New York, New York, January 14, 2025—The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced today that it will distribute more than $31.8 million in support of 1,127 arts and cultural organizations nationwide. Words Without Borders is honored to be named among the NEA’s 2025 grantees. The Grants for Arts Projects award will fund the publication of WWB’s award-winning digital magazine and its free literary events series.
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Dec 23, 2024 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Nina Perrotta
From NYRB Classics | The Rest Is Silence by Augusto Monterroso, translated from the Spanish by Aaron Kerner | Fiction | 176 pages | ISBN 9781681378824 | US$16.95 What the publisher says: “The one and only novel by the renowned Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso—Latin America’s most expansive miniaturist, whose tiny, acid, and bracingly surreal narratives Italo Calvino dubbed ‘the most beautiful stories in the world’—The Rest Is Silence presents the reader with the kaleidoscopic portrait of...
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Dec 12, 2024 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Nina Perrotta
I started the year by interviewing Yoko Tawada about her connection to Germany via Japan and her portrayal of animals, among other things, so it’s a strange but sparkling little coincidence that I should end this year with a book by a vastly different Japanese writer, Yoko Ogawa, whose novel Mina’s Matchbox (originally serialized in Japan in 2005, and published in Stephen Spender’s English translation only this year) also straddles the connections between Germany and Japan, and has animals...
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Tobias Carroll |Nina Perrotta |Samantha Schnee |Nathalie Handal |Sudipto Pal
From Litmus Press | Viscera: Eight Voices from Poland edited by Mark Tardi, translated from Polish by Mark Tardi, Lynn Suh, Małgorzata Myk, and Katarzyna Szuster-Tardi | Poetry | 288 pages | ISBN 9781933959832 | US$22.00 What the publisher says: “Viscera: Eight Voices from Poland, edited by Mark Tardi, presents a selection of work by Polish women writers committed to experimenting with form while shaping vigorous political critiques.” What Eileen Myles says: “People who teach should use these...
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Nov 25, 2024 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Nina Perrotta
November 20, 2024, New York, NY—Words Without Borders has been awarded the 2024 Hermann Kesten Prize, the organization announced today. Awarded by PEN Centre Germany, the prize recognizes organizations that have made a special commitment to persecuted writers, essayists, poets, and journalists.
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Nov 6, 2024 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Lia Galvan Lisker |Alexander Aguayo |Isabel Zapata |Nina Perrotta
This reading list spotlights books by nine Mexican women writers who are shaping the literary scene in Mexico and beyond. These novels, works of nonfiction, and short story collections were all translated into English by women, and each denounces and resists various forms of violence in its own distinct way. 1.
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Sep 18, 2024 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Ruth Kemp |Daniel Hahn |Nina Perrotta
Spanning nine countries from the Caribbean and Mexico down to Chile and Argentina, these books are a vibrant showcase of the diversity in storytelling and illustration styles from authors writing for young people in Spanish and Portuguese. The riches here are testament, too, to the work of independent publishers such as Enchanted Lion, Eerdmans, and HopeRoad in the UK, as well as Tapioca Stories—a young independent house specializing in translations of quirky Latin American picture books.
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Sep 12, 2024 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Katrine Øgaard Jensen |Ursula Andkjær Olsen |Yoo Heekyung |Nina Perrotta
Translator’s note: This poem is part of a longer work titled “Ancient Algorithms,” in which I remix, rewrite, and mistranslate my English translations of Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s poetry—sometimes with Olsen’s involvement, sometimes with other poets, and occasionally, like in this case, by myself. Aided by two decks of virtual cards in a game of online Spider Solitaire, I wove together and corrupted my translations of Olsen’s lines based on a set of self-imposed rules.
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Sep 5, 2024 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Kristian Lundberg |Tobias Carroll |Nina Perrotta |Yoo Heekyung
Late summer or early fall—memories are unreliable Father was lying on his side In the swaying spiderweb, no spider could be seen The spider is hiding, why don’t you try touching the spiderweb But I am afraid The sound of wooden floorboards creaking Withering up for decades, Father rolled over to his other side And when he did, his scent, his warmth Just as I hadn’t touched the spiderweb, I didn’t dare touch my father’s back And so, neither the spider nor my father moved Why couldn’t I grasp...
