I thought he was in search for something meaningful and, thus, he was exposing himself to conditions he hoped would light the way for a coming revelation.

“To me writing is an act of listening. And if I am writing well then what I write will necessarily be new to me as well. Writing is a journey into the unknown.”

We’re living in a world where both languages and people are constantly in flux. In this novel, I wanted to focus on a small group of people making their way through that world.

I think my task was less linguistic than it was a matter of representing the environment in my mind and sensing its moods emotionally, entering that strange atmosphere so it could seep through into the translation.

I started working on [the book] in 2016 when my grandmother was showing the first serious signs of dementia. I wanted to create an archive of sorts, in which her life was told in stories.

I always say to myself that Jawbone came to me as a nightmare, a vision full of fear and desire, but I really can’t remember how it started.

I’m always a little amazed at the subtlety of Samanta’s language, how much she can convey in so few words—that hasn’t changed over all the books of hers I’ve translated.

“One thing that makes 'Kibogo' such a compelling work is the critical distance it maintains from all the power structures it describes.”

The way the sunset sometimes Tiepolos the clouds.

When I first read Identitti, I thought, “Is the author using this in earnest or is this meant to be funny?”

I thought I could create a space for sharing women’s global experiences through literary fiction. 

I’ve always felt that my commitment is to the text, not the author, but it is wonderful to be able to ask for and receive permission.

It’s sun-kissed, industrial, god-fearing, gas-guzzling, all of it built on a harrowing history of lynch mobs and expropriation.

New Yorker critic Merve Emre and WWB Books Editor Adam Dalva talk about the 2022 International Booker Prize, recognition for translators, and her journey as a critic.

Homophobia is everywhere. I didn't realize I would grapple with it upon leaving Nigeria.

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).

I think that people rediscovered reading in that period of calm when everything was standing still, and no one could go out or do anything.

Architectural gems crumble on street corners, shrouded in grit till they’re decreed too ugly to save.

There are many great Arabic children’s books that haven’t reached their young readers yet.

In all these years that I’ve spent writing in English, I’ve always felt that my leaning toward literariness was informed by Malayalam.

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

Answers aren’t always easy to come by in the real world when you’re a kid.

Not so many people think of the local languages as literary languages.

London, which seems all sprawl and braggadocio, is at the same time self-contained and fiercely defended.

A multivoiced narrative was essential for the telling of the storm.

Humor was essential for my Ramayana.

The earthquake opened new sociopolitical avenues to be addressed in literary fiction.

The experiences gained from a lifetime of reading and pursuing other professions are invaluable assets.

In 2021, Mike Fu and Jenna Tang worked together through the Emerging Translator Mentorship Program of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), with a focus on prose from Taiwan. Fu had published…

While many Latinx writers work in English, there is a longstanding tradition of writers born or raised in this country who work in Spanish.

“Excess-birth” or “illegal” children (usually girls) were those born to a family who already had a child during the years when China’s one-child policy, in force from the…

When you are not held back by any fear, you can write songs of liberation.

Manon Steffan Ros was nervous about presenting Llyfr Glas Nebo to the world. Before it won the 2018 National Eisteddfod Prose Medal and the 2019 Wales Book of the Year, before it became a best seller,…

In recent years, a proliferation of books in translation for children and young adults has brought imaginative stories from around the world to new readers. We’re speaking with some of the extraordinary…

In the weeks after riots shook the seemingly tranquil island of Mauritius in 1999, the novelist Carl de Souza began writing a short, dense text that would become a nearly real-time depiction of that unreal…

Born in 1956, Khalid al-Maaly is an Iraqi poet, publisher, and translator. After leaving Iraq in 1979, in the wake of the Ba'ath regime's crackdown on leftists and intellectuals, he spent time…

WWB’s Translator Relay features an interview with a different translator every few months. The current month’s translator will choose the next interviewee, adding a different, sixth…

Translator Victoria Caudle interviews a pioneer of queer Korean literature, Kim Bi.

Leïla Slimani is an international literary star, a poster-woman of French multiculturalism and a leading voice on human rights. Born in 1981 to a surgeon mother and economist father in Rabat, she…

Translator Shook talks with President Jorge Carlos Fonseca about contemporary Cabo Verdean poetry, his influences, and the relationship between literature and politics.

During the January 2021 pro-Navalny demonstrations that swept Russia, hundreds of protestors were rounded up, brutalized, and jailed. Some of them ended up in the Sakharovo Detention Center for Foreign…

Born in a small town in northern Indiana in 1971, Sofia Samatar is the author of the forthcoming memoir The White Mosque (Catapult Books, 2022). Her first novel, A Stranger in Olondria, for which she…

WWB’s Translator Relay features an interview with a different translator every few months. The current month’s translator will choose the next interviewee, adding a different, sixth…

In the wake of the anti-extradition protests in 2019 and the implementation of the National Security Law in June 2020, Hong Kong—and, consequently, its literature—has increasingly been in…

I don’t live (t)here, but it lives in me still.

In 2019, translator Hannah Kauders stumbled on a copy of Las Biuty Queens, the second book of short stories by Chilean writer Iván Monalisa Ojeda, and fell in love. Kauders immediately set out…

Among the many online literary and arts journals published in India, हाकारा । hākārā occupies a rather unique position, embedded in a strong linguistic…

In recent years, a proliferation of books in translation for children and young adults has brought imaginative stories from around the world to new readers. We’re speaking with some of the extraordinary…

Last month, literary translator Nicholas Glastonbury, who translates from Turkish and Kurdish, posted a Twitter thread about the failings of the publishing industry when it comes to translated literature.…

There were always spies coming to attend our events.

In this interview, translators Jenna Tang and May Huang discuss their experiences translating contemporary literature in Chinese from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Their conversation touches on the diversity…

WWB’s Translator Relay features an interview with a different translator every few months. The current month’s translator will choose the next interviewee, adding a different, sixth…

In recent years, a proliferation of books in translation for children and young adults has brought imaginative stories from around the world to new readers. We’re speaking with some of the extraordinary…

I met Sarah Booker virtually in 2018 when she spoke with a graduate student reading group about translating Cristina Rivera Garza's The Iliac Crest. During her virtual visit, Booker…

Natasha Lehrer is a prize-winning literary translator from French to English. She recently translated Consent, Vanessa Springora’s memoir of her teenage relationship with the writer Gabriel Matzneff,…

I love this city against my own better judgment.

WWB's March issue features writing from Galicia, an autonomous region of northwestern Spain that borders Portugal. Though the Galician language shares a common root with modern Portuguese, Galicia's…

WWB’s Translator Relay features an interview with a different translator every few months. The current month’s translator will choose the next interviewee, adding a different, sixth…

In recent years, a proliferation of books in translation for children and young adults has brought imaginative stories from around the world to new readers. We’re speaking with some of the extraordinary…

I’m always a bit shattered by Athens.