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The City and the Writer

A mirrored portrait of writer Carmen Bugan in a pink zip-up sweater.
The City and the Writer: In Tecuci, Romania, with Carmen Bugan
By Nathalie Handal
If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains.—Italo Calvino, Invisible…
2023-07-City-and-Writer-Dana-Grigorcea-Feature.jpeg
Credit: Mardiana Sani
The City and the Writer: In Zürich with Dana Grigorcea
By Nathalie Handal
In Switzerland people tend to be reticent, but reticence is—from both literary and theoretical perspectives—the best starting point for sudden passion.
Translated from German by Alta L. Price
Portrait of author Isabel Fargo Cole
Photo: Dirk Skiba
The City and the Writer: Isabel Fargo Cole in Berlin
By Nathalie Handal
I came here looking for the East Berlin I saw across the Berlin Wall in 1987 as an eighth grader on an exchange program.
Portrait of Wallis Wilde-Menozzi
The City and the Writer: Wallis Wilde-Menozzi in Parma
By Nathalie Handal
On clear days, the Alps and Apennines lift Parma to the heavens.
A black-and-white portrait of Mosab Abu Toha
The City and the Writer: In Gaza with Mosab Abu Toha
By Nathalie Handal
“Gaza is the soil where the tree of my consciousness and enlightenment has grown.”
Portrait of author Karim Kattan
Photo: R Topakian
The City and the Writer: In Jericho with Karim Kattan
By Nathalie Handal
In a world of enforced transparency and readability, Jericho provides lush and deep gardens where no one can find you.
A portrait of Senegalese American writer Baba Badji
The City and the Writer: In Ziguinchor, Senegal, with Baba Badji
By Nathalie Handal
One is hopeful from the moment one enters the city of Ziguinchor.
A portrait of writer Edvige Giunta
Photo © Joshua Fausty
The City and the Writer: In Gela, Sicily, with Edvige Giunta
By Nathalie Handal
Gela, my odd Gela, a provincial soul in an overgrown urban body, a clash of ancient and modern.
A portrait of writer Giusy Sciacca.
Photo credit: Marcello Bianca.
The City and the Writer: In Siracusa with Giusy Sciacca
By Nathalie Handal
Literature and, inevitably, theater, have belonged to Siracusa since its Greek colonization.
Portrait of writer Roberto Alajmo in front of a stone wall
The City and the Writer: In Palermo with Roberto Alajmo
By Nathalie Handal
Palermo moves a lot but hardly budges.
Translated from Italian by the author
Multimedia
Black and white portrait of writer Maria Borio
The City and the Writer: In Assisi with Maria Borio
By Nathalie Handal
In this corner of Europe, so many places have a humanist significance that’s truly contemporary, made of beauty and nature, in harmony with global change.
Translated from Italian by Danielle Pieratti
Portrait of writer Cristina Bendek in front of green plants
Photo: Karen Bendek
The City and the Writer: In San Andrés with Cristina Bendek
By Nathalie Handal
Violence—slow, fast, indirect, direct—is exercised against the islands and our way of living here.
Portrait of author Claudia Durastanti
Photo: Civitella Ranieri Foundation
The City and the Writer: In Rome with Claudia Durastanti
By Nathalie Handal
It must be an effect of the light, but Rome can be a maze . . .
Portrait of writer Deniz Dağdelen Düzgün
The City and the Writer: In Izmir with Deniz Dağdelen Düzgün
By Nathalie Handal
The thing that surprises me the most is that parchment paper was invented in Izmir.
Portrait of writer Cassandra Atherton
The City and the Writer: In Melbourne with Cassandra Atherton
By Nathalie Handal
There is a restlessness in the city that I have grown to love—it’s like a swaying cat’s tail.
Multimedia
Portrait of writer Fiona Kelly McGregor with a black cat
Photo copyright © Jamie James
The City and the Writer: In Sydney with Fiona Kelly McGregor
By Nathalie Handal
No matter where you are in the city, the time of year or weather, the sky at dusk will stop you in your tracks.
Portrait of writer Moira Egan
Photo copyright © Eric Toccaceli
The City and the Writer: In Rome with Moira Egan
By Nathalie Handal
The way the sunset sometimes Tiepolos the clouds.
Portrait of writer and translator André Naffis-Sahely
Photo copyright © Nina Subin
The City and the Writer: In Los Angeles with André Naffis-Sahely
By Nathalie Handal
It’s sun-kissed, industrial, god-fearing, gas-guzzling, all of it built on a harrowing history of lynch mobs and expropriation.
May-2022-City-and-Writer-Deepak-Unnikrishnan-Featured
Deepak Unnikrishnan. Photo © Philip Cheung.
The City and the Writer: In Abu Dhabi with Deepak Unnikrishnan
By Nathalie Handal
If there is one constant about this place, it is this, that the people on the move (here) all rely on a different set of lies to proceed with their truth(s).
A portrait of writer Miguel Syjuco
The City and the Writer: In Manila with Miguel Syjuco
By Nathalie Handal
Architectural gems crumble on street corners, shrouded in grit till they’re decreed too ugly to save.
Febrary-2022-City-and-Writer-Fiona-Sampson
Fiona Sampson. Photo copyright © Ekaterina Voskresenskaya.
The City and the Writer: In London with Fiona Sampson
By Nathalie Handal
London, which seems all sprawl and braggadocio, is at the same time self-contained and fiercely defended.
Portrait of writer Sinan Antoon
Photo © Koutaiba al-Janabi
The City and the Writer: In Baghdad with Sinan Antoon
By Nathalie Handal
I don’t live (t)here, but it lives in me still.
Portrait of writer Ioana Morpurgo
The City and the Writer: In Bucharest with Ioana Morpurgo
By Nathalie Handal
I love this city against my own better judgment.
Portrait of writer Natalie Bakopoulos
The City and the Writer: In Athens with Natalie Bakopoulos
By Nathalie Handal
I’m always a bit shattered by Athens.
Portrait of writer Christopher Bakken
The City and the Writer: In Thessaloniki with Christopher Bakken
By Nathalie Handal
Dig anywhere in the city and you collide with history.
Portrait of writer Naivo
The City and the Writer: In Antananarivo, Madagascar, with Naivo
By Nathalie Handal
Its name, “the city of thousands,” is synonymous with multitude.
Portrait of writer Ali Al Ameri
Photo © Satish Kumar.
The City and the Writer: In Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, with Ali Al Ameri
By Nathalie Handal
The desert is the shoulder of the city.
Portrait of writer Maya C. Popa
The City and the Writer: In Oxford with Maya C. Popa
By Nathalie Handal
Oxford is one hidden city layered over another.
Portrait of writer Angelo Cannavacciuolo
The City and the Writer: In Naples with Angelo Cannavacciuolo
By Nathalie Handal
Naples is the city of a hundred cities, of a hundred satellites all orbiting the unique, massive planet that is memory.
Translated by Alta L. Price
Multimedia
The City and the Writer: In Mexico City with Carmen Boullosa
By Carmen Boullosa
The city has devoured itself over and over again.
Translated by Samantha Schnee
The City and the Writer: In Athens with Amanda Michalopoulou
By Nathalie Handal
Athens is about instant decisions, constant change, boldness and confusion and nerve.
The City and the Writer: In London with Jay Parini
By Nathalie Handal
London is a self-enclosed world that contains all worlds.
The City and the Writer: In New York City with Bob Holman
By Nathalie Handal
Usually there is no time to be moody, only the slap and the dash and the drill and the dig, you dig?
The City and the Writer: In Salerno with Giorgio Sica
By Nathalie Handal
Even if Salerno is blessed with sunshine, many things happen in the twilight.
The City and the Writer: In New York City with Willa Carroll
By Nathalie Handal
Car horns suddenly transformed into instruments of emotion, sirens of mourning.
The City and the Writer: In Paris with Marilyn Hacker
By Nathalie Handal
Something is always about to happen.
The City and the Writer: In Delhi with Sudeep Sen
By Nathalie Handal
Old Mughal monuments stand at ease with glass-and-steel office towers.
The City and the Writer: In Annaba, Algeria, with Janette Ayachi
By Nathalie Handal
For me, there is no Algeria, only Annaba, where the Barbary coast yawns out.
The City and the Writer: In Paris with John Freeman
By Nathalie Handal
The Paris I grew to love isn’t gone, but right now it is shutting down.
The City and the Writer: In Lisbon with Patricio Ferrari
By Nathalie Handal
Returning to Lisbon means savoring another delectable local delicacy: the mouthwatering Portuguese language with its varied assortment of vowels.
The City and the Writer: In Berlin with Rajeev Balasubramanyam
By Nathalie Handal
There is a permanent solace in the knowledge that you can’t be the weirdest person in this city.
The City and the Writer: In Amman with Amjad Nasser (1955–2019)
By Nathalie Handal
There is another life that unfolds in this low-lying area at the foot of the seven hills.
The City and the Writer: In Rome with Peter Covino
By Nathalie Handal
Returning to Rome makes the blood rush in unpredictable ways.
The City and the Writer: In Auckland, New Zealand with Chloe Honum
By Nathalie Handal
There’s no forgetting that we’re on an island at the bottom of the Pacific, looking up, heading into the morning while much of the world is still making its way through the day we just left behind.
The City and the Writer: In Toledo, Ohio, with Charles Kell
By Nathalie Handal
Toledo is a city marked with scratches, indentations, ashes of other cities, shadows, fugitive trails, clouds of smoke, dust, and slamming doors.
The City and the Writer: In Vicenza with Carlo Pizzati
By Nathalie Handal
Is it possible to ever fully outgrow the place that first left its mark on you? The town, city, or village where you lived for the first fifteen years of your life?
The City and the Writer: In Amman with Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
By Nathalie Handal
Amman consumes me when I’m there and it can feel like an entire world. It demands so much attention even as it grumbles about its own frustrations.
The City and the Writer: In Abidjan with Véronique Tadjo
By Nathalie Handal
The moment you think that you know Abidjan, the city escapes your embrace.
The City and the Writer: In New York City with Kathy Engel
By Nathalie Handal
The place that keeps having me back, its moonless nights, its raucous urban sea, anonymous and also memory-crammed, people- and ghost-filled.
The City and the Writer: In Athens with Alicia E. Stallings
By Nathalie Handal
If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains.—Italo Calvino, Invisible…
The City and the Writer: In Turin with Angie Cruz
By Nathalie Handal
Torino wears an elegant three-piece suit of the most beautiful fabric, but it’s frayed at the cuffs, missing some buttons.
The City and the Writer: In Lisbon, Portugal, and Orkney, Scotland with Rachael McGill
By Nathalie Handal
There’s nowhere that I don’t feel like an outsider. It’s always been that way . . . For me that’s something joyful.
The City and the Writer: In Calgary with Marcello Di Cintio
By Nathalie Handal
Passion lives in the realization, especially among Calgary’s creative class, that everything is permitted here.
The City and the Writer: In Worcester with Oliver de la Paz
By Nathalie Handal
From certain vantage points you can see the bones of the old city. Graying old buildings. Brickworks. Row houses stacked up on the hill.
The City and the Writer: In Bangalore with Madhuri Vijay
By Nathalie Handal
Bangalore was a small, sleepy cantonment town that woke up one day to find it had become a booming metropolis.
The City and the Writer: In Bombay with Jeet Thayil
By Nathalie Handal
Nothing exists outside Bombay. From the moment you get off the plane, you know you have entered a room full of mirrors: everything is self-referential.
The City and the Writer: In Nablus with Isabella Hammad
By Nathalie Handal
Even in the Nablus of my mind I remain outside, peering in at windows, opening stale cupboards, looking for abandoned objects from the past.
The City and the Writer: In Tripoli, Lebanon with Ruth Awad
By Nathalie Handal
Tripoli is my father’s birthplace, and it always evokes existential questions about my identity: can I be of a place but not from it?
The City and the Writer: In San José, Costa Rica with David Cruz
By Nathalie Handal
Outside San José, the world exists, but it is a city that, despite its smallness, tries to contain you.
The City and the Writer: In Taipei with Afaa Weaver
By Nathalie Handal
What comes to us of places we have not seen is not what that place actually is. This important fact is ignored more and more.