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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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Aug 28, 2024 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Liz Wood |Ruth Kemp
It’s a thrilling thing, still, to read a book that is so full of female voices that it would fail the Bechdel test if the genders were reversed. While men inevitably appear in Claudia Piñeiro’s Time of the Flies, published by Charco Press and translated by Frances Riddle, their presence is always ancillary, in relationship to the women who drive its plot and describe its world. But this isn’t a utopic portrayal of female friendship.
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Aug 28, 2024 | 
www2.societyofauthors.org | Ruth Kemp
A third of literary translators have already lost work or income because of generative AI, according to a recent SoA survey of members. But this is not the only impact that generative AI has had. It is raising new issues for translators around working methods, copyright, credit and transparency. It may even change how we think about the act – and art – of translation. In the SoA survey, 37% of translators reported having used some form of generative AI in their work.
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May 7, 2024 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Ahmed Naji |Fatema Haidari |Ruth Kemp |Alexander Aguayo
1. Las Vegas was brimming with mosques. As soon as I’d typed “mosque near me” into the Google Maps search, myriad red dots displayed themselves all at once on my screen. The Al-Hamada mosque, one of the first Las Vegas mosques founded in the seventies, and winner of a five-star rating, boasted a review claiming that its writer had “felt at peace” as soon as he’d crossed over the threshold.
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May 2, 2024 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Ruth Kemp |Nora Lester Murad |Kelly Zhang |Hongyu Zhu
Food as a treat, food as a weapon, food that brings us together, and hunger that compounds our isolation . . . The stories collected here are united by the common theme of food or its absence.
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Apr 17, 2024 | 
shorturl.at | Lira Konys |Marina Gudelj |Ruth Kemp |Kelly Zhang
I called it “Shakharbanu’s Curse.” It accompanied me all through my childhood, and when I came of age, it bore witness to my agony of trying to fit in with those around me. A good title determines the fate of a story, and while I would never get tired of scribbling things down, I faltered like a hobbled horse over the title of this tale. I found myself gazing with pity at my story and throwing on it, like a halter, a random phrase that sprang to mind.
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Apr 16, 2024 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Lora Maslenitsyna |Chiara Marchelli |Ruth Kemp |Kelly Zhang
Tradition and modernity are locked in a miserable marriage in Baqytgul Sarmekova’s short story collection To Hell with Poets. The children of this union spend their lives in Kazakhstan’s auls bursting with gossip, lonely apartments in the sprawling capital of Astana, and at busy markets. Sarmekova’s characters attempt to broker a peace with their circumstances but often meet tragic consequences. Occasionally, and perhaps by no act of their own, they encounter brief glimmers of a conceivable future.
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Mar 28, 2024 | 
daseditions.com | Ruth Kemp
"'Brothers' is written in an Anglo-Saxon way that is incredibly intelligent, humorous and entertaining at the same time, and thus brings an otherwise largely lacking quality to German literature." Katharina Granzin, Frankfurter Rundschau. "Jackie Thomae’s characters Mick and Gabriel claim for themselves what is natural for white males in European society.
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Jan 1, 2024 | 
kirkusreviews.com | Ruth Kemp |James McBride |Mitch Albom
A thoroughly researched novel that's bogged down with unnecessary detail. This murder mystery, set in the city of Split in what is now Croatia, is steeped in early-20th-century Europe’s roiling politics. The year is 1936. The action takes place against the forthcoming Olympics in Hitler’s Germany. Split is a cultural mélange, including remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire along with Croats, Czechs, Italians, Russians, Germans, and others who conduct business in the bustling port.
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Dec 4, 2023 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Silvia Arazi |Leyla Shukurova |Ruth Kemp |Alexander Aguayo
It’s a calm, sunny midday toward the end of January, and the city seems to stand still. I arrive at my sister’s house for a family lunch. It could be just another gathering, siblings getting together on any ordinary day. But it isn’t. It’s the first time we’re seeing each other since my mother’s funeral. Our mother’s funeral. I ring the doorbell. My sister comes to open the entrance gate. She’s wearing denim shorts and white sneakers, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
