On my way to see Colm Tóibín interview László Krasznahorkai I read Will Self's Guardian article “The novel is dead (this time it's for real).” I can…

Jordan Stump has translated many authors from the French including Marie Redonnet, Eric Chevillard, and Honoré de Balzac. His translation of The Jardin des Plantes by Claude Simon won the 2001…

“I learned the art of writing and the art of storytelling in the cafés of Montevideo,” said the great and loved Eduardo Galeano during his hour-long conversation with Jessica Hagedorn…

At the end of Book Expo America events on June 7, readers gathered at McNally Jackson Books for a Bridge Series discussion with Russian author Mikhail Shishkin, his translator Marian Schwartz, and editor…

As part of the PEN World Voices Festival, Herta Müller spent an afternoon at NYU's Deutsches Haus on May 3 to discuss whether it's possible for literature to bear witness. When I arrived…

Literature, claims the director of this year's International Literature Festival in Berlin, Ulrich Schreiber, can be our society's political and moral compass. Since 2001, the Festival…

In a courtyard gathering at NYU’s Deutches Haus, Martin Rauchbauer and Deike Benjoya sat down with Ross Benjamin, Alfed Goubran, and Richard Sieburth last month to discuss the life and work of Friedrich…

When a translator and author are well-paired, we have what Joy Williams has called John Ashbery’s new translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations, “a marriage divine.” Ashbery,…

PEN created this video of the panel our editorial director, Susan Harris, moderated (and we co-sponsored) as part of the PEN World Voices Festival, with Nadine Bismuth, Nicolas Dickner, Dominique Fortier,…

Over the past few weeks, New York has begun to celebrate the centenary of one of Poland’s—and maybe the world’s—greatest poets, Czeslaw Milosz,as the “Year of Milosz” kicks…

Throwing one’s hat into this ring can be a two-edged plume, mark my mixed-up metaphor.  If we, wearing our translator hats (though not many of us can afford hats), tell reviewers that any adjective,…

With so few titles getting translated into English, it seems ludicrous to impose too many conditions in terms of matching a book reviewer to a translated project, or even in terms of determining whether…

As translator Ross Benjamin said during his discussion with The New Republic‘s senior editor Ruth Franklin this past February at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Job: The Story of a Simple…

“Only by sucking, not by knowing can the subtle essence be conveyed— sap of the word and world’s flowing” –Peter Cole, from Things on Which I've Stumbled   Peter…

We are experimenting here with a new way of collecting news called Storify. While it certainly wouldn't replace long form writing, it seems to be a nice webby way of creating broad brush strokes around…

We're very excited about the new translation of Flaubert's Madame Bovary by Lydia Davis, whom, you may recall, also translated Proust's Swann's Way. Davis is blogging over at the (newly…

Last week, Rohan and I sat down with Alex Epstein who was in New York City visiting from Tel Aviv. We had a very nice discussion on his book, Blue has no South, on mythology, angels, Jorge Luis Borges…

The mood at the BookExpo America conference this year was decidedly upbeat and busy. The shortened, mid-week schedule seemed to work better than anticipated by exhibitors*, reports of good sales numbers…

I went to see the NBCC's* “This Critical Moment” panel for the single reason that last year I hadn't and missed Rigoberto González's discussion of Álvaro Enrigue (whose…

My goal each day of the PEN World Voices Festival is to find one writer or one book I've never heard of that sparks my interest. What more could one ask for? Thursday's find was Marcel Möring…

We are as always excited about the upcoming PEN World Voices Festival, to be held this year from Monday, April 26th, to Sunday May 2nd. Notably this year the festival will travel to six other cities around…

I taught my son a simple rule when he, at the age of four or so, began to see the barrage of books that are part of the marketing effort behind movies. If the book came out first, the book is better,…

 “Play with all your mind, play” I think, echoing here the epigraph to Life A Users Manual with my own substitution, that Georges Perec would have liked the “Searching…

When I began reading Words Without Borders some years ago my first reaction was always “who the hell are these people?”  – the writers, that is, all these authors I'd never…

It is significant, we learned from Javier Marías's U.S. publisher Barbara Epler recently at the New York Public Library, that he was in America. Marías refused to come to the United…

I'll be reporting here a bit more about Javier Marías, but ran across this today (when reading a letter to the editor of TLS by the wonderful writer Gabriel Josipovici) and think it will be of interest…

Agur Schiff and Edward Gauvin, reading at a recent Words Without Borders event in Hudson, N My favorite piece of the week is a conversation between Michael Silverblatt, Álvaro Uribe and Cristina…

Garth has started a Bolaño “syllabus” over at the Millions. It’s meant to be a primer for those new to his writing, but I also think it’s a good departure for discussion…

End of summer here in upstate New York and the cool weather is already beginning to show its face. That means more reading soon instead of our usual summery frolicking. But until then we leave you with…

Our late August weekend reading suggestions continue to be brief as we’ve spent our mental energy willing Hurricane Bill out into the ocean, so here are a few tidbits that you might enjoy:Listening:…

My shiny new galley of The Wall in My Head: Words and Images from the Fall of the Iron Curtain arrived yesterday. This of course isn’t any ol’ galley, this is Words Without Borders’…

Filip Florian, Michael ScammellWhere did the New York Times Book Review decide to publish its very first foreign-language edition? In Romania, of course. Of course? Yes! Writing about the Review, Jennifer…

At the “Big Think”, Alane Salierno Mason, a founder of Words Without Borders talks about Words Without Borders and the challenges of publishing literature in translation. View it here.

I’ve recently begun reading Eduardo Galeano’s beautiful Mirrors, which is one of those books that defy categories as well as time. Instead of one long narrative, the book is full of short…

Archipelago books is a non-profit publisher that has brought into English 50 books so far from 21 languages. I think Jill Schoolman, Archipelago’s founder, puts it best when she describes their…

Then head over to the Three Percent blog and see what the Best Translated Book Award panelists are reading. I think this constitutes something like a pre-long-list list, so get in on the action early.…

This is great news – the next volume of two lines will be edited by Natasha Wimmer and Jeffrey Yang. Natasha Wimmer of course translated Roberto Bolaño’s monumental 2666 and The Savage…

I want to take a moment to let you know about a project that I’ve been involved with that I believe is important and that you might find of interest. I bring it up now because the film that this…

The Brooklyn Rail’s Jed Lipinski interviews translator Susan BernofskyRail: As a fiction writer, have your translations had any effect on your writing style?Bernofsky: Walser has such a strong,…

This is very exciting. Words Without Borders’ next book is being published by Open Letter Books this fall and is available for pre-order now. What’s more, there will be a “The Wall in…

Jean Feraca of Wisconsin Public Radio's “Here on Earth” program (subtitled, coincidentally, “Radio Without Borders”) chats with our own Susan Harris about Words Without Borders,…

The Observer Translation Project just posted a roundtable discussion on our favorite topic, including our very own Susan Harris along with Chad Post of the Three Percent blog and Open Letter publishers,…

I happen to be reading Francisco Goldman’s The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? and ran across this interesting dialogue between Goldman and Silvana Paternostro, the author of My…

Georges Perec fans will be glad to know that Godine will release a revised 20th anniversary edition of Life A User’s Manual this fall. The Review of Contemporary Fiction is updating its Perec issue…

Why do people want to listen to an author when they have their books? From time to time, I’m plagued by this question.The last week of May, the Third International Forum on the Novel took place…

It was awkward at first. Halfway through our annual Memorial Day Words Without Borders vs Doctors Without Borders softball game, Joshua – our shortstop – starts asking us all what we’re…

James Marcus (who recently contributed to our PEN World Voices Festival coverage) asked members of the Book Critics Circle “Which work in translation has had the most effect on your reading and…

When you’re around a lot of authors it may be easy to forget what a rare and precious thing that is, being a published author. Even more so is being a published author in the United States if you…

Photos by Mary Reagan, text from the PEN Website. “What can pictures provide that words cannot? Our panelists have all used pictures to tell challenging and compelling stories: Shaun Tan, from Australia,…

My second day at the PEN World Voices Festival. Tired from being up late talking about Thursday’s events with our contributors Nicolle Elizabeth and David Varno, blogging friend Sam Jones and earlier,…

Before our written report comes in from last night’s PEN World Voices Festival event, Evolution/Revolution. Here’s PEN’s description of the event:Join us to celebrate the fifth annual…

As you may know we at Words Without Borders have dedicated our April to the PEN World Voices Festival. We began with our monthly issue full of writing from festival participants and we’ve just started…

This month’s issue of Words Without Borders explores the work of writers who will soon gather in New York City for the PEN World Voices Festival. This year’s festival explores the theme “how…

The two Israeli editors who brought Etgar Keret to national attention met recently to reminisce for the record about their brief but memorable association with him. Hannan Hever and Moshe Ron had a history…

When I saw Etgar Keret at the PEN World Voices Festival last year I was disappointed because he chose to read “Hat Trick,” a story that is as unsettling in its implications as it is gruesome.…

Here's part one of a video with Miriam Schlesinger and Philip Lopate discussing Etgar Keret as part of our Conversations on Great Contemporary Literature Series. Links to other posts in our Girl on…

The French Embassy in New York is sponsoring “Oulipo In New York: A Workshop Of Experimental Literature” from April 1st through the 4th in locations around the city. The Oulipo, Ouvroir de…

You know Words Without Borders knows no boundaries so it should come as no surprise that we're on Flickr as well as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Here's a Flickr slideshow from some of our latest…

Here's a clip from our last Conversations on Great Contemporary Literature with Edith Grossman discussing Don Quixote as Tragedy and Comedy. There are more videos from this event at our Words Without…

If you've read Etgar Keret's stories you know they're as addicting as they are short. You probably find yourself retelling or even reading them to your friends. Well how about sharing your…

This is going to be a great event. There are few greater novels and fewer still where the translator plays such an important role. The Quixote in Spanish, in all its stories and stories within stories,…

The following event may be of interest to our readers in New York City:Please join us in celebrating the publication of BOMB #106, dedicated to Montevideo, Santiago & Buenos AiresReading & Launch…

If you’re reading 2666 yet not interested in the gossip columns on Roberto Bolaño, you may enjoy the thoughtful conversation going on about the book in this “bolaño-l”…

Chad Post of Open Letter Books just announced the ten fiction and ten poetry finalists for the 2008 Best Translated Book of the Year award. The goal of the award is to help bring attention to great works…

This recently came in from Roger Sedarat at Queens College:The Queens College MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation hosts a translation conference from March 26-March 28, 2009, with…

In the second installment in our Diving Pool book club, Stephen Snyder, the translator of the book and of Ogawa’s Housekeeper and the Professor (forthcoming from Picador), speaks to Amber Qureshi…

If you missed the terrific discussion between Stephen Snyder and Allison Powell on Yoko Ogawa's The Diving Pool last week, you're in luck, because we're making a video available on YouTube.…

The Lost in Translation reading challenge, created by Frances Evangelista who blogs at Nonsuchbook, is bringing together readers and bloggers to read and discuss literature in translation. There are over…

This time of the year the Words Without Borders staff sits around the Words Without Borders fireplace with our mugs of hot toddy, chatting about the books we’ve been reading. Into the wee hours…

From The Literary Saloon, we see that Caro Llewellyn, who has headed the PEN World Voices Festival in past years, is leaving for a new position in Melbourne.The way I understand it, planning for one festival…

For their Best Books of the Year list, National Public Radio (NPR) chose Horacio Castellanos Moya's Senselessness among the top five foreign novels of the year. Senslessness is the story of an unnamed…

As we mentioned last week, the publisher devoted to literary translations, Open Letter, has introduced their “Best Literary Translation Award” starting last week with a long-list of 25 titles.…

I think I could have listened to Francisco Goldman tell stories all night long, despite the heat raditating from over a hundred of us standing, eager Bolaño fans at Idlewild Bookstore Thursday…

The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation offers its second annual summer fiction-writing seminar in historic Sozopol in Bulgaria. The seminar consists of intensive daily fiction workshops, roundtable discussions,…

Martin Riker from Dalkey Archive Press has an interesting piece at “The Front Table“* on his love for Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s work. Regarding why it’s important to publish several…

Novelist Francisco Goldman and translator Natasha Wimmer will discuss Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 this Thursday at Idlewild Books in New York City. Brought together as part of the Words Without…

Over at Three Percent, Karl Pohrt, owner of Shaman Drum bookstore and part of a US delegation of booksellers visiting the Beijing book fair, has been blogging his visit to China. Karl’s most recent…

A call for entries for the 2008 Saif-Ghobash Banipal Prize from our friends at Banipal. Note that the deadline is 31 January! (And that this is for books published in the UK.)The end of this month, 31…

It’s hot. It’s humid. We’re sticky. It’s Friday and already this week we’ve watched the New York City Transit system crumble in the wake of a tornado in Brooklyn(?!) It’s…

The indefatigable Chad Post and E.J. Van Lanen have just launched their wide-ranging blog at the University of Rochester, appropriately entitled Three Percent, which reflects the percentage of books translated…

The Brooklyn Rail has boldly launched a new initiative to publish translations of both short fiction and plays online. In Translation promotes literary translations and encourages collaboration between…