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Lancaster International Fiction Lectures

Each year, WWB partners with the Lancaster Litfest to present the texts of the Lancaster International Fiction Lectures from the Autumn Weekend.

A black and white Bruegel engraving portraying several figures inside a chaotic room filled with...

"The Alchemist" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1926. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain.

The Alchemy of Literature: A Lecture on Pain

By Guadalupe Nettel

In this year’s Lancaster International Fiction Lecture from Litfest’s “Autumn Weekend,” award-winning writer Guadalupe Nettel considers how writers turn the pain of human experience—physical, emotional, psychological—into moments of literary…

Translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey

An old village well in the middle of a field

Photo by Vlad Hordiienko on Unsplash

What Fiction (Including in Translation) Can Do in Times Like Ours

By Georgi Gospodinov

Literature, storytelling, and fiction in particular can actually perform simple miracles.

Translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel

A woman in a pink sari walks in the street in front of an apartment building

Photo by Akshar Dave on Unsplash

Writing in Troubled Times

By Geetanjali Shree

Fiction came to us from the West. Creativity did not.

Photo of a newspaper being printed

Photo by Bank Phrom on Unsplash

Juan Gabriel Vásquez: Fiction as the News

By Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Like most Colombians, I had several close encounters with “chaos” during those years.