Knox Hall Room 509, Columbia University, 606 West 122 Street, New York, NY 10027

ArteEast presents Fractured Web: Gazan Writing Online, a public program at Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, in which Palestinian writers will discuss the increasing presence of literature online, and will explore the way contemporary writing has been shaped by the Internet. Each writer works in multiple platforms so that their literary voices encompass poetry, prose, and journalism.  In this discussion moderated by Khalid Hadeed (Cornell University) and featuring academic discussant Helga Tawil Soori (NYU); Somaya al Sousi and Fatena al Ghorra contextualize their work within the broader landscape of Palestinian literature online, while Adania Shibli (co-editor Narrating Gaza) discusses the way in which such platforms foster literary community and discourse.

Fractured Web: Gazan Writing Online is presented in collaboration with the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University

236 E. 3rd St., New York, NY 10009

ArteEast will present From Memoir to Reportage and Back Again: Gazan Writers Salon, to present contemporary writing from Gaza to New York’s literary audiences. Through readings of both poetry and prose, the writers will offer a rare glimpse into the diverse emerging and established voices that make up the dynamic literary scene in this city.

Like Darwish’s seminal poem Silence for Gaza, we see Palestinian writers of subsequent generations grapple with the personal and communal experiences of Gaza’s history of occupation, blockade and war.

From Memoir to Reportage and Back Again: Gazan Writers Salon is presented in collaboration with the Nuyorican Poets Café

Participants:
Fatenah al Ghorrah, author of five books of poetry, The Sea is Still Behind Us (Gaza, 2002) and A Very Disturbing Woman Woman (Egypt, 2003); Adania Shibli, co-editor of the online forum “Narrating Gaza,” who will reflect on multi-genre writings from the forum that explore the repercussions of the Gaza War; Soumaya Al Sousi, poet has produced four poetry collections of her poetry, including The First Sip of the Sea’s Chest (1998), Doors (2003), Lonely Alone (2005), and Idea, Void, White in a joint collection with the poet Hala El Sharouf (published by Dar Al-Adab, Beirut, 2005).

Guggenheim Fellow, Guatemalan author, and Nebraskan, Eduardo Halfon will be reading from his forthcoming novel The Polish Boxer (Bellevue Literary Press) at Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco. You can read Eduardo’s short stories “The Polish Boxer” and “Never an End to Hemingway” at Words without Borders: http://wordswithoutborders.org/contributor/eduardo-halfon. You can also find a bit more here: http://www.believermag.com/issues/201002/?read=roundtable and here: http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Snapshot-Guatemala

This is our first event in San Francisco and we hope to see you there.

More on Eduardo:

Eduardo Halfon was born in Guatemala City. He moved to the United States with his family at the age of ten, went to school in South Florida, studied Industrial Engineering at North Carolina State University, and then returned to Guatemala to teach Literature during eight years at Universidad Francisco Marroquín. Named one of best young Latin American writers by the Hay Festival of Bogotá, he is also the recipient of the prestigious José María de Pereda Prize for the Short Novel. Although bilingual, Halfon chooses to write in Spanish and has published nine books of fiction. In 2011 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on continuing the story of The Polish Boxer, which is inspired by his own family history and which will be the first of his novels to be published in English, in 2012, by Bellevue Literary Press. Halfon now lives in Nebraska and travels frequently to Guatemala.

This event is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. An ASL interpreter will be made available upon request.

Words without Borders is pleased to present a reading by acclaimed Chinese poet Bei Dao, whose work has been translated into more than 30 languages, including 6 volumes in English. Bei Dao will be reading with his translator Eliot Weinberger.

Born in Beijing in 1949, Bei Dao is one of the most gifted writers in modern China. He became, in the 1970s, the poetic voice of his generation and has gained international acclaim over the last decades for his haunting interior poetic landscapes; his poetry is translated and published in some twenty-five languages around the world. In 1978, he co-founded the first unofficial literary journal since 1949, called Today (Jintian), which became a prominent forum for “Misty Poets,” a group derided by the Communist literary establishment for their “obscure” language and departure from socialist realism. Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, and the United States. His work has been translated into thirty languages, including six poetry volumes in English: The Rose of Time (2009), Unlock (2000), Landscape Over Zero (1996), Forms of Distance (1994), Old Snow (1992), The August Sleepwalker (1990), the collection of stories Waves (1990), the collections of essays Midnight’s Gate (2005), and Blue House (2000). He has won numerous awards, including the Jeanette Schocken Literary Prize from Bremerhaven, Germany (2005), the International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco (2002), and the Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN (1990). He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives and teaches in Hong Kong.

Elliot Weinberger is an essayist, political commentator, translator, and editor. His books of avant-gardist literary essays include Karmic Traces, An Elemental Thing (named by the Village Voice as one of the “20 Best Books of the Year”) and, most recently, Oranges & Peanuts for Sale. His political articles are collected in What I Heard About Iraq – called by the Guardian the one antiwar “classic” of the Iraq war– and What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles. The author of a study of Chinese poetry translation, 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, he is the translator of the poetry of Bei Dao, and the editor of The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry and a forthcoming series from Chinese University Press of Hong Kong. His other anthologies include World Beat: International Poetry Now from New Directions and American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators & Outsiders. Among his translations of Latin American poetry and prose are the Collected Poems 1957-1987 of Octavio Paz, Vicente Huidbro’s Altazor, and Jorge Luis Borges’ Selected Non-Fictions, which received the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism. He was born in New York City, where he still lives. Often presented as a “post-national” writer, his work has been translated into thirty languages, and appears frequently in the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and periodicals and newspapers abroad.

This event was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. An ASL interpreter will be made available upon request.

Queens Museum of Art
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
7 train or LIRR to Mets/Willets Point
Admission, RSVP required
http://www.queenscouncilarts.org

Queens in Love with Literature (QUILL) presents a creative translation event featuring an afternoon of poetry and visuals presented by authors working in Spanish and English at the Queens Museum of Art in Corona Park on Saturday, February 11from 4-6pm. Featured author/translators Guillermo Filice Castro, Urayoan Noel and Elizabeth Torres will present works and images in a multidisciplinary reading focusing on the translation of the visual world to the written word.

A suggested donation of includes light refreshments provided in part by Lagunitas Brewing Co. Join us for the performance and stay for the beer, plus an informal tour of the Queens International Exhibit!

Queens in Love with Literature (QUILL) is a forum for Queens writers who are committed to developing and defining the creative field of translation, and offers audiences in Queens the opportunity not only to hear from authors working in their own neighborhood, but also perhaps in their own language. This year QUILL seeks to expand the concept of translation through a series of creative translation events, featuring artists from other disciplines in collaborative interpretations of literary works. QUILL is funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts.

Queens Council on the Arts is the borough-wide arts council of Queens. The mission of the Queens Council on Arts is to foster, and develop the arts in Queens county and to support arts organizations and individual artists in presenting their cultural diversity for the benefit of the community.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Guiellermo Filice Castro’s work has appeared in journals such as Assaracus, Barrow Street, The Bellevue Literary Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Court Green, Ducts.org, Fogged Clarity, Hinchas de Poesia, LaFovea.org, La Petite Zine, Quarterly West, among others, as well as the anthologies Divining Divas, My Diva, This Full Green Hour, Saints of Hysteria, This New Breed, and more. His translations of Olga Orozco, in collaboration with Ron Drummond, are featured in Guernica, Terra Incognita, U.S. Latino Review, and Visions. He’s the author of two chapbooks, “Cry Me a Lorca” (Seven Kitchens Press, 2010) and “Toy Storm” (Big Fat Press, 1997). Born and raised in Argentina, Castro is now a U.S. citizen.

Urayoán Noel is a poet and critic from San Juan, Puerto Rico who teaches literature and creative writing at SUNY Albany. He is the author of four bilingual or translingual books of poetry, the most recent of which is Hi-Density Politics (BlazeVOX Books, 2010). A contributing editor of Mandorla, his work has appeared in a variety of national and international journals, and in anthologies of Puerto Rican, Latin American, Hispanic Caribbean, and U.S. Latino/a poetry. He is currently a Bronx Council on the Arts BRIO fellow in poetry and a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, where he is completing a book on Nuyorican poetry. Noel’s collaborations include a variety of text-sound works with musician and composer Monxo López (with whom he also performs), and, with artist Martha Clippinger, the multimedia project The Edgemere Letters.

Elizabeth Torres, born in Bogota, Columbia, is a poet and multi-media artist. Currently Kean University’s Poet in Residence, where she studied Media & Film and Fine Arts, she is the author of 16 published works in English and Spanish, and director of Red Door Magazine since 2009. A member of the Neverstop project and “Eyelids Burn”, an experimental band, as well as the Poetas en NY collective, Elizabeth has given more than 1,000 interviews around the world and toured throughout Mexico, the US and China. Elizabeth was selected by CNN’s Young People Who Rock in 2007 and by American Eagle Outfitter’s “Live your Life” campaign as a role model.

Words without Borders and Haiti Cultural Exchange present an evening with author Évelyne Trouillot.
The NYU Bookstore
726 Broadway
6:30-8:00 pm

To RSVP: send an email to regine@haiticulturalx.org

Évelyne Trouillot lives in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and teaches in the French department at the State University. She published her first book of short stories in 1996. In 2004 Trouillot received the Prix de la romancière francophone du Club Soroptimist de Grenoble for her first novel Rosalie l’infâme. In 2005 her first piece for the theater, Le bleu de l’île, received the Beaumarchais award from ETC Caraïbe. Trouillot has also published poetry in French and in Creole. Her latest novel, La mémoire aux abois, published in France by Éditions Hoëbeke in May 2010, presents a compelling view of the dictatorship in Haiti and received the prestigious award Le prix Carbet de la Caraibe et du Tout-Monde in December 2010.

The evening will feature a reading by Évelyne followed by a discussion of her work with NYU Professor J. Michael Dash.

This event is supported by a grant from National Endowment for the Arts

Europe is in the midst of a crime wave—a surge of creative and innovative detective fiction that pays its respects to the traditions of noir while incorporating the psychological novel, the political thriller, and the border-crossings that reflect the increasingly globalized culture of the EU. The eighth annual New Literature from Europe Festival organized by eight European Cultural Institutes in New York, will present a series ...of readings and discussions in Manhattan and Brooklyn from November 15-17, 2011, with writers Caryl Férey (France), Zygmunt Miłoszewski (Poland), Ana Maria Sandu (Romania), Stefan Slupetzky (Austria), José Carlos Somoza (Spain), and Jan Costin Wagner (Germany), joined by U.S. guest author Dan Fesperman.

A special film series complements this year’s spoken word programs, featuring both adaptations of crime novels and new approaches to the genre that play with the conventions of film noir. Presented incollaboration with the Museum of the Moving Image from November 18-20, 2011, the series ranges from Czech and Austrian films of the ‘40s and the early ‘50s rarely seen in the U.S., to contemporary productions from France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Romania, including the critically acclaimed works Aurora by Cristi Puiu and The Double Hour by Giuseppe Capotondi. Authors Zygmunt Miloszewski and Jan Costin Wagner will be present to discuss film versions of their novels featured in the Festival.

All literary events are free and open to the public. For tickets for the film screenings, visit www.movingimage.us.

More details on the festival, guest authors and events will soon be available at www.newlitfromeurope.org.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Literary series: November 15-17, 2011

Tue., Nov 15th Booked! Crime Scene: Europe
Join the kick-off event with writers Caryl Férey, Zygmunt Miloszewski, Ana Maria Sandu, Stefan Slupetzky, José Carlos Somoza, and Jan Costin Wagner reading from their featured novels. The readings will be followed by a reception. at 7pm Czech Center | 321 East, 73rd Street, NYC

Wed., Nov. 16th The Shifting Scene
Festival writers in conversation with Dan Fesperman, author of The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, The Double Game and Layover in Dubai. The event will be moderated by Professor B. J. Rahn (Hunter College). at 6.30pm The Center for Fiction | 17 East 47th Street, NYC | T 212.755.6710 info@centerforfiction.org

Thu., Nov. 17th Return to the Crime Scene:
Looking for more clues? Don’t miss this reading with five of our guest authors at 7pm Bookcourt | 163 Court St | Brooklyn, NY | T (718) 875-3677

Film series: November 18-20, 2011
At Museum of the Moving Image|36-01 35 Ave. (at 37 St.) |Astoria, NY 11106

Friday, Nov. 18th
7:00pm Poland Entanglement (Uwikłanie), dir. Jacek Bromski, 2011
Adaptation of the novel Uwikłanie by Zygmunt Miłoszewski
Author Zygmunt Miłoszewski in person

Saturday, Nov. 19th
2:00pm Austria: Stolen Identity, dir. Emile E. Reinert, 1953
After themes of the novel Ich war Jack Mortimer by Alexander Lernet-Holenia
4:30pm Germany: The Silence (Das letzte Schweigen), dir. Baran bo Odar, 2010
Adaptation of the novel Das Schweigen by Jan Costin Wagner
Author Jan Costin Wagner in person
7:00pm Romania: Aurora, dir. Cristi Puiu, 2010
Original script by Cristi Puiu

Sunday, Nov. 20th
2:00pm Czech Republic: Conscience (Svedomi), dir. Jiří Krejčík, 1948
Original script by Jiří Fried, J.A. Novotný, Vladimír Valenta
4:30pm Italy: The Double Hour, dir. Giuseppe Capotondi, 2009
Original script by Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi, Stefano Sardo
7:00pm France: Série Noire, dir. Alain Corneau, 1979
Adaption of the novel A Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson

Partner institutions
The festival is organized by the New York branches of the Austrian Cultural Forum, Czech Center, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Goethe-Institut, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Polish Cultural Institute, Romanian Cultural Institute, and Instituto Cervantes, within the framework of EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture), in collaboration with the Center for Fiction, BookCourt, Museum of the Moving Image, The Mysterious Bookshop, InTranslation, Words without Borders, and with the support of the EU Delegation to the UN.

We invite you to join Words without Borders on November 14, 2011, in celebration of literature’s power to inform and transform people across linguistic, cultural, and national boundaries. The evening will feature readings from our November 2011: Caribbean Issue by Madison Smartt Bell, Évelyne Trouillot, and Tiphanie Yanique, and a musical performance by Vo Duo.

Location: The Bohemian National Hall, 321 East 73rd Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenue, New York, NY 10021.
Date: November 14, 2011
Time: 6-9 p.m.
Tickets:
-VIP Table for 10: $5,000
-Individual VIP Table Seat: $500
-General Admission Ticket: $250

Down and Dirty Round the World returns to Lit Crawl NYC with a new batch of Words without Borders’ top translators presenting their favorite hard-boiled, pulpy, and erotic international literature. Chip Rossetti, Edna McCown, Alison Dundy, and Anna Kushner will introduce us to slumming Egyptians, murderous Austrians, impotent Congolese, and naughty Cubans . . . Hope to see you there!

September 10, 2011 from 8:15-9 pm at Lolita Bar (266 Broome Street)

Bios

Chip Rossetti is a doctoral student in Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania and the managing editor for the Library of Arabic Literature translation series at NYU Press. His translations include Saint Theresa and Sleeping with Strangers by Bahaa Abdelmeguid and Utopia by Ahmed Khaled Towfik.

Alison Dundy is a writer and translator from French and Italian into English. Her translations include Sony Labou Tansi’s Life and a Half.

Edna McCown holds a PhD in German literature and has translated more than a dozen books from German.

Anna Kushner’s translations include The Halfway House by Guillermo Rosales, The Autobiography of Fidel Castro by Norberto Fuentes, and Jerusalem by Gonçalo M. Tavares.

The full Lit Crawl schedule can be found here http://litcrawl.org/nyc/schedule.

The Absent Sea by Carlos Franz
Book presentation (in English and Spanish)
Thursday, April 28, 7:00 pm
Americas Society/Council of the Americas
680 Park Avenue (@ 68th St)
Free admission

Award-winning Chilean author Franz (b. 1959) and his translator, Leland H. Chambers, will read bilingually from the author’s novel El desierto (2005; La Nación-Sudamericana Prize), published in translation as The Absent Sea by McPherson & Company. The novel explores the subject of the disappeared and, particularly, complicity during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-90). Franz, who was a member of the writing workshop taught by José Donoso, is an exponent of “The New Chilean Narrative” of the 1990s, a movement whose writers have distanced themselves from the tradition of magic realism in Latin American literature. He has lived in Santiago, London, and Berlin, and now resides in Madrid.

Kirkus Reviews praised The Absent Sea as “dark, brilliant, and disturbing.”

Reservations required.
Americas Society Members: Reserve at membersres@americas-society.org
Non-Members: Reserve online.

Co-presented by McPherson & Company. With the collaboration of the Co-presented by McPherson & Company. With the collaboration of the Consulate General of Chile in New York, InterAmericas®, and Words Without Borders.

The event is presented as part of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. For more information, visit www.pen.org.

Pulled between calls for regional autonomy versus demands for a stronger federation, regions of the world such as Catalonia, Georgia and Québec tackle questions of cultural identity every day. Join writers from these “minority/majority nations” as they discuss how their multiple identities, regional, national and global, inform the choices they make in their creative work.

With Nadine Bismuth, Nicolas Dickner, Dominique Fortier, Mykola Riabchuk, and Teresa Solana; moderated by Susan Harris

Free and open to the public. No reservations required.

Scandinavia House, 58 Park Ave., New York City

Co-sponsored by Words Without Borders, the Blue Metropolis Foundation, and Scandinavia House

More than 100 writers from 40 nations convene in New York City to celebrate the power of the writer’s voice as a bold and vital element of public discourse. Dare to view the world from a fresh perspective at stages across the city, including the festival’s hubs—The Standard, New York and the High Line. The program features panel discussions, one-on-one conversations, readings, performances, and much more. http://www.pen.org/festival

Bring world literature to readers
and recognition to literary translators

Saturday, April 16, 1:00-4:00 pm

Fourth Floor, Woolworth Building (enter at 15 Barclay Street)

Esther Allen: Translator, author, Assistant Professor at Baruch College, CUNY.
Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres; editor, translator and annotator of Penguin
Classics anthology José Marti: Selected Writings. 2009-2010 Fellow at the Cullman
Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Emmanuelle Ertel: Assistant Professor of French literature and of translation at New
York University. Translator into French of Louis Begley’s The Man Who Was Late
and As Max Saw It, Rick Moody’s The Black Veil, and Tom Perrotta’s Little Children.
Director, new M.A. program in Literary Translation: French to English at New York
University.

Susan Harris: Editorial Director, Words without Borders and co-editor, with Ilya
Kaminsky, of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry

Barbara Harshav: Translator of literary and scholarly works from French, German,
Hebrew, and Yiddish, including Night Train to Lisbon; Only Yesterday; American Yiddish
Poetry; and A Surplus of Memory. President, American Literary Translators Association,
member PEN and Banff International Literary Translation Conference advisory council,
teaches translation in Comparative Literature department at Yale University.

Free and open to the public. Seating is limited. RSVP to Alison.Dundy@nyu.edu

Sponsored by the New York University School of Continuing Education

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York is proud to present the winner of the ACFNY Translation Prize 2010, David Dollenmayer. To celebrate the occasion, we invite you to an evening dedicated to Austrian literature in translation.

Renowned critic Daniela Strigl from Vienna will present the winner of the ACFNY Translation Prize 2010:

David Dollenmayer, a literary translator and professor of German at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, has translated works as varied as Dearest Georg by Elias Canetti (2010), Crossing the Hudson by Peter Stephan Jungk (2009), and House of Childhood by Anna Mitgutsch (2006).

He is being honored for his translation of Michael Köhlmeier’s Idyll With Drowning Dog (Idylle mit ertrinkendem Hund), first published in 2008.

Michael Köhlmeier, author of the panoramic 2007 novel Abendland, is a major Austrian writer whose works deserve wider attention. He has never been translated into English. The novella Idylle mit ertrinkendem Hund was enthusiastically reviewed in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (October 1, 2008), the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (November 8, 2008), the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (January 27, 2009), and Die Zeit (April 23, 2009).  Its combination of compelling story, sharply drawn characters, and exquisitely subtle narration has universal appeal. 

Fatima Nagvi (Rutgers University) will lead a conversation on literature in translation, followed by a short reading of the award-winning text. The event will be followed by a reception with authentic Austrian food.

In collaboration with the Dietrich W. Botstiber Foundation and Words Without Borders, the ACFNY Translation Prize supports translations of contemporary Austrian fiction, poetry, and drama which have preferably not appeared previously in English with a grant of € 3,000. The award will be disbursed upon the formal acceptance of the manuscript by a publishing house, which must occur within a period of three years.

The trophy for the winner is sponsored by SWAROVSKI GEMS™.

Reservations can be made at http://www.acfny.org/event/394/.