More than the Facts
In gearing up for the coming two-day symposium on literary reportage, After Kapuściński: The Art of Reportage in the 21st Century, fellow sponsor The National Book Critics Circle has posted a thorough summary of the events and participants at Critical Mass. Eric Banks writes: “[As] categorical differences between fiction and nonfiction are increasingly ambiguous…a discussion of reportage as a literary art form is paramount.”
Issues to be raised include the nature of narrative in reportage and where it comes from; the use of the first-person voice and its potential for fiction; and whether Kapuściński’s method of journalistic witnessing is still possible today.
October 6-7, 2009 at NYU’s Hemmerdinger Hall. More details at Polish Cultural Institute.
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NYRB Turns 10
New York Review Books, champion of authors who ought not to be forgotten and books that need to be translated, has been around for ten years now. This fall, they celebrate with events in New York, England, and Boston.
Alastair Reid reads from Ounce Dice Trice at Books of Wonder, Thursday, September 24, 6 pm.
Jhumpa Lahiri reads from The Cost of Living: The Early and Uncollected Fiction of Mavis Gallant at McNally Jackson, Monday, October 5, 7 pm.
Launch party for the first graphic novel published by NYRB, Poem Strip by Dino Buzzati, featuring translator Marina Harss, Idlewild Books, Tuesday, October 6, 7 pm
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One More for Rodoreda
Natasha Wimmer’s essay for the Nation on Mercè Rodoreda, “A Domestic Existentialist,” continues the momentum for bringing Catalan author Mercè Rodoreda into the global canon. Wimmer discusses Rodoreda along with Carmen Laforet, whose Nada, with Edith Grossman’s translation, is out from the Modern Library. Wimmer eloquently describes the details that drew her to these authors’ work, “a remarkable flowering of talent and a bounty yet to be fully appreciated by English-language readers.”
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Winter Wheat
Khaled Mattawa, one of WWB‘s valued translators and poets, is a featured guest at this year’s Winter Wheat: The Mid-American Review Festival of Writing. More details at Work-in-Progress.