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The Care that Goes into Translation: An Interview with Lisa Hayden

The Care that Goes into Translation: An Interview with Lisa Hayden

ByGraham Oliver

A central theme of the novel Laurus is that time is a spiral. Events and themes recur throughout history, but each time with a slight variation. The structure of the work, by Russian author Eugene Vodolazkin, mirrors that premise. Scenes and pages reference and reshape each other constantly. Though the book follows an ascetic holy healer in the Middle Ages, the events echo back to Biblical times and forward to present-day, literally.

There Are Places I Remember: on the Fine Line Between Fiction and Memoir in Translation

There Are Places I Remember: on the Fine Line Between Fiction and Memoir in Translation

ByYardenne Greenspan

Sometimes it feels as if I’m not merely translating people’s stories into English, but helping people preserve their own lives, turning them into internationally comprehendible keepsakes. For every two books of pure fiction that I translate, there is a third that is not exactly a memoir, not exactly a biography, but a novelization, an imagining, of true events that occurred in an author’s family.

In Bookstores Near You: The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race ed. by Jesmyn Ward
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In Bookstores Near You: The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race ed. by Jesmyn Ward

ByLeslie Jill Patterson

Jesmyn Ward introduces The Fire This Time, an anthology of essays and poems of witness and dissent, by expressing her own commingled dismay and hope regarding race relations in America. This book, she says, gathers “the great thinkers and extraordinary voices” of her generation to consider racism, both subtle and egregious.

Review: DOG YEARS by Melissa Yancy
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Review: DOG YEARS by Melissa Yancy

ByLaura Spence-Ash

Melissa Yancy’s debut story collection, Dog Years, is an exploration into the intersection between our public and private selves. Each of the nine stories follows a central protagonist who is navigating the world, often uneasily and unsuccessfully, trying hard to figure out how to create a life with fewer disappointments. The collection was chosen by Richard Russo to receive the 2016 Drue Heinz Literature Prize.

The Best Poem I Read This Month: Jayy Dodd’s “Black Philosophy #3”
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The Best Poem I Read This Month: Jayy Dodd’s “Black Philosophy #3”

ByJohn Rufo

“Black Philosophy #3,” Dodd’s new poem from the first issue of The Shade Journal, poses a series of “if…then…” questioning statements regarding blackness, black boys, death, dead boys, living boys, pretty boys, prettiness, and a manner of interrelating, interlocking, and uncompromising conditions between those terms.