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Grief

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

A bed of red and yellow busy lizzies

Photo by Michael Elliott Photography

A Mother’s Voice

By Silvia Arazi

Over coffee, my brother pulls up his chair and discreetly asks me if I’m going to write that book about our mother.

Translated from Spanish by Charlotte Coombe

black and white drawing of a boy with smoke coming up behind him floating over a red mound

Julia Griffin, "Smoke." Copyright Julia Griffin

Three Poems

By Imran Sada’i

I sit on the shores of emptiness / and watch my soul foaming red

Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman

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Princess

By Marta Orriols

A headband, you say? You’re ridiculous.

Translated from Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem

Transcending the Human Viewpoint

By Madeleine Feeny

I allowed myself to be very playful and unafraid, and to try everything.

Writing Against Estrangement in Galicia

By Scott Shanahan

No doubt a few Galicians will think it in very bad taste to inaugurate this issue with a likeness to their higher profile southern neighbors, but because there may be a great many glad for the comparison,…

Condolences

By Mishka Lavigne

Gabrielle Sauriol lies in the Pacific Ocean now.

Translated from French by Neil Blackadder

Remains of a Party in Condesa

By Ariel Urquiza

The clown had put the platter of coke on his head, like a waiter carrying a tray.

Translated from Spanish by Samantha Schnee

The Urn

By Marcin Wicha

It's vile to disregard somebody's sense of aesthetics just because they're dead.

Translated from Polish by Marta Dziurosz

You Died on Me

By José Luís Peixoto

And I neither want nor can forget what I once felt from your gaze.

Translated from Portuguese by Robin Patterson

Honor Thy Father and Mother: In Mourning

By Susan Harris

All people mourn in their own ways.

Father’s Chair

By Vinicius Jatobá

But only one chair was Father's chair, the heir's chair.

Translated from Portuguese by Jethro Soutar

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Season of Grief

By Guy-Gerald Ménard

Entwined concrete houses / perform pirouettes on both sides of the street

Translated from Haitian Creole by Chantal Kenol

Multilingual

Under the Rubble

By Guy-Gerald Ménard

Fear sets up a tent / on our chest

Translated from Haitian Creole by Chantal Kenol

Multilingual

From behind a Closed Window

Is there, out there, a nothingness / With no future, and no past?

Translated from Vietnamese by Martha Collins & Ngo Tu Lap

Crying over Light Green

No, the word “green” is hardly adequate.

Translated from Korean by Won-Chung Kim & Christopher Merrill

Longing Inspired by the Law of Gravity

By Fadwa Touqan

I miss the company of books / Their consolation through trouble and joy

Translated from Arabic by Chris Millis & Tania Tamari Nasir

From “The Rising of the Ashes”

By Tahar Ben Jelloun

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: La remontee des cendres (The Rising of the Ashes) is the title of a small text, written in French by the Paris-based Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun. It was published by Editions…

Translated from French by Cullen Goldblatt

From “Portrait of M”

By Matei Călinescu

Anyone's death is a great tragedy.

Translated from Romanian by Angela Jianu