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Interviews

In Translation: An Interview with Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky
By David Auerbach
Each text requires a different voice, a different English.
An Interview with Zygmunt Miłoszewski
By Richard Jackson
Zygmunt Miłoszewski is a Polish novelist, journalist, and editor, currently working as a columnist for Newsweek.  Born in Warsaw in 1976, he is the author of several books across a variety of…
An Interview with Yan Lianke
By Chenxin Jiang
China is a great environment for an author, because such implausible things happen in everyday life.
Translated from Chinese by the author
Learn
An Interview with Chan Koon-chung
By Chenxin Jiang
There is indeed no place like China–but that isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Translated from Chinese by the author
The History of the Present: Sergio González Rodríguez on the Mexican Literary World and the Drug War
By Carmen Boullosa
The Mexican literary world is in crisis as it tries to face the history of the present.
Translated from Spanish by Ollie Brock
Multilingual
A Necessary Distance from Reality: An Interview with Rutu Modan
By Meg Storey
Rutu Modan is a rarity. One of the few established comics artists in Israel, she is also one of the few established female comics artists in the world. After graduating from Bezalel Academy of Art and…
A portrait of writer Nujoom Al-Ghanem
Photo credit: Reem Albudoor
The City and the Writer: In Dubai with Nujoom Al-Ghanem
By Nathalie Handal
It has different faces as well as various paces; fast and unbearable during the day, colorful and wild at night.
The City and the Writer: In Portland with Flávia Rocha
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.                                                                      …
A Conversation with Rafik Schami
By Fiston Mwanza Mujila
Rafik Schami was born in Damascus in 1946, came to Germany in 1971, and studied chemistry in Heidelberg. Today he is the most successful German-speaking Arabic writer. His novels have been translated…
Translated from German
Multilingual
A Scream Has No Alphabet: An Interview with Aïcha Arnaout
By Cécile Oumhani
Born in Damascus, the poet and novelist Aïcha Arnaout has lived in Paris since 1978. We have had quite a few conversations over the past few years, often at the Marché de la Poésie,…
Translated from French by Cécile Oumhani
Multilingual
Living to Write: An Interview with Doménico Chiappe
Jonathan Blitzer: “The Writer of Memories,” the story we’ve published in this issue of the magazine, is the first one to appear in your book of stories, Párrafos Sueltos (2003).…
Translated from Spanish
Publishing in Tunisia: An Interview with Elisabeth Daldoul of Elyzad
Elisabeth Daldoul founded her publishing house, Elyzad, in Tunisia almost six years ago. My first experience with her was with A cinq mains, a book in which she published five short stories written by…
Translated from French
The City and the Writer: In Athens with Dimitris Athinakis
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.                                                              …
Artists Talk: Israel/Palestine. An Interview with Raji Bathish
By Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi and Chana Morgenstern
In her latest dispatch for our Artists Talk: Israel/Palestine series, Azareen Van der Vliet speaks to Raji Bathish, a Palestinian poet, novelist, screenplay writer and cultural activist born in Nazareth.…
The Story of a Homosexual: An Interview with Ni Dongxue
By Liao Yiwu
Just hold my hands tightly. I won’t force you to kiss me or do anything.
Translated from Chinese by Wenguang Huang
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Performing Language: An Interview with Abdellah Taia
In late April, Abdellah Taïa arrives in New York City for the seventh annual PEN World Voices Festival. Two days before he is to sit down in conversation with Dale Peck for an interview hosted by…
A Tiny Repeated Gesture: An Interview with Blanca Riestra
By Jonathan Blitzer
Jonathan Blitzer:  In this issue of the magazine, we’ve published your story “The Night Sucks (La noche sucks),” which later became the novel of the same name.  You have never considered yourself…
Translated from Spanish by the author
Contraband Forms: An Interview with Ernesto Pérez Zúñiga
By Ivan Navarro
Jonathan Blitzer:  You have written three books of poems, two short-story collections, and three novels.  But for the first part of your career—and while you lived in Granada, where you…
Translated from Spanish
A Region of the Spirit: An Interview with Carlos Franz
By Toni Sala
Jonathan Blitzer: The stories that appear in La Prisionera, which you have recently presented here in Madrid, take place in the imaginary city of Pampa Hundida, which also exists in your novels. What…
Translated from Spanish
Multilingual
The Delayed Arrival of the Writer: An Interview with Jorge Eduardo Benavides
In our second installment in WWB's Our Man in Madrid series, Jonathan Blitzer speaks to Jorge Eduardo Benavides, whose story "The Reckoning" appears in the March issue of the magazine. Read…
Translated from Spanish
Censorship in Egypt: An Interview with Magdy El Shafee
By Susan Harris
In February 2008, WWB published an extract from the first Egyptian graphic novel for adults, Magdy El Shafee's Metro. Set in a chaotic modern Cairo pulsing with economic and social instability, the…
Beyond the Realms of Fiction: An Interview with Juan Carlos Chirinos
photo by Daniel  MordzinskiIn the first installment in WWB’s Our Man in Madrid series, Jonathan Blitzer speaks to Juan Carlos Chirinos, whose story “Ride of the Valkyries” appears…
Translated from Spanish
Artists Talk: Israel/Palestine. An Interview with Till Roeskens
By Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
In her latest dispatch for our Artists Talk: Israel/Palestine series, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi speaks to visual artist Till Roeskens, whose documentary film Videomappings: Aida, Palestine won the…
An Interview with Dimitris Athinakis
By Peter Constantine
There is an interesting trend right now where Cretan teenagers and hipster twentysomethings send each other text messages in fifteen-syllable iambic lines.
Translated from Greek
A Conversation with Alex Epstein, author of “Blue has no South”
By Bud Parr
Last week, Rohan and I sat down with Alex Epstein who was in New York City visiting from Tel Aviv. We had a very nice discussion on his book, Blue has no South, on mythology, angels, Jorge Luis Borges…
An Interview with Ewa Schilling
By W. Martin
How did you begin writing The Fool, and what motivated you to tell this particular story?
Translated from Polish by the author
Interview with Alina Bronsky, author of “Broken Glass Park”
By Daniela Hurezanu
Alina Bronsky, a German writer of Russian origin, immigrated to Germany when she was thirteen, and published her first novel, Broken Glass Park, in 2008 when she was only thirty years old. The novel was…
Poeboes Podcast with Samuel Shimon
By André Naffis-Sahely
Samuel Shimon (1956 – ) is an Assyrian writer, filmmaker, editor and anthologist. Born in Al-Habbaniyah, Iraq, he left his country in 1979. Over the years, he has lived in Damascus, Amman, Beirut,…
Interview with Etgar Keret
By Daniela Hurezanu
The interview was conducted at the AWP Annual Conference on Saturday, April 10, 2010 in Denver, where Keret was one of the main featured presenters. On Friday night, April 9, Keret read together with…
Interview with Laura Healy, translator of Roberto Bolaño’s “The Romantic Dogs”
By Nicolle Elizabeth
This interview with Laura Healy, translator of Roberto Bolaño's poetry, is part of our month long look at international poetry and celebration of the release of The Ecco Anthology of International…
Translating Dino Buzzati: A Conversation with Marina Harss
By Michael McDonald
In addition to her freelance writing for the New Yorker’s Goings On About Town and her frequent forays into dance criticism, Marina Harss is also a versatile and prolific translator from French, Spanish,…
From “I Can’t Stand Still”: An Interview with Jáchym Topol
By Tomáš Weiss
Weiss: What was your first time out of the country?Topol: My first time was in East Germany with my mom. She took my brother and me to the seaside there. That change—all of a sudden by the sea in the…
Translated from Czech by Alex Zucker
An Interview with Wu Wenjian
By Liao Yiwu
I was nobody, like a piece of sesame in a big pot of soup.
Translated from Chinese by Wenguang Huang
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An Interview with Adrian Tomine
By Dot Lin
Over 800 pages and eleven years in the making, A Drifting Life is a monumental achievement and the long-waited autobiography of legendary Japanese cartoonist Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Called the father of gekiga—realistic…
Interviews Etgar Keret on Tradition, Translation, and Alien Toasters
Adam Rovner interviews Etgar Keret as part of WWB’s month-long discussion of Etgar Keret’s Girl on the Fridge. You can find links to other posts and essays in this series at the bottom of…
Translated from Hebrew
This Animated Life: An Interview with David Polonsky
By Liel Leibovitz
A few simple descriptions would suffice to understand just how rich and strange an artwork Waltz with Bashir truly is: an animated documentary film
Scheherazade, C’est Moi? An Interview with Amara Lakhous
By Suzanne Ruta
Algeria was imploding into civil war in 1993 when Amara Lakhous, born in 1970 in Algiers, wrote his first novel.
Translated from Italian by the author
In Conversation
By Claire Messud
Buket Uzuner: I met Claire Messud in Istanbul in November 2007 while she was visiting the city as one of the guest writers of the Istanbul Book Fair. A week before I met her, I started to read her very…
on Translating “Yalo”
Drake Stutesman: Yalo is interesting for the various different voices that it employs, and the ways in which it combines vernaculars, languages and perspectives into a single narrative. What do you think…
An Interview with Péter Esterházy
By Kellan Cummings
In this interview, we speak about some of the predominant themes in Esterházy's literature, particularly family and language.
Translated from Hungarian by Judith Sollosy
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Joseph Brodsky
By Valentina Polukhina
Between 2003 and 2004, Valentina Polukhina conducted a series of interviews about Nobel Prize in Literature recipient Joseph Brodsky. She spoke with former Brodsky student and executive director of The…
Knows Meier
1. How did you discover Walser, and what first inspired you to undertake a translation of his work?Two of my friends, T. and M., love Walser very much. I can’t remember which of them first spoke…
On Translating Walser
1. How did you discover Walser, and what first inspired you to undertake a translation of his work?On first coming across Walser in graduate school I found his voice beguiling and, at times, infuriating.…
The Silence of the Outcasts: An Interview with Dacia Maraini
(Pescasseroli, Easter 2005)To meet with Dacia Maraini and speak with her in peace means going up to the bitter and severe lands of Abruzzo where the writer, who lives in Rome, takes refuge during holidays…
Translated from Italian
Taken from Life: An Interview with Gipi
By Nicole Rudick
By Nicole Rudick The appeal of some translated works lies in their ability to relate specific events to a broad foreign audience. Others operate in reverse, projecting a nonspecific vantage that…
The Last Farm Novel?: An Interview with Michiel Heyns
By Dedi Felman
I met Michiel Heyns—author, translator, and professor of English at Stellenbosch University from 1987 until 2003—last year when he was here in the U.S. as a visiting professor at the University of Tulsa,…
An Interview with Hisham Matar
By Nouri Gana
Nouri Gana talks to Hisham Mattar about poetry, beards, and his novel In the Country of Men.
An Interview with Zara Houshmand
How did you find the pieces you included in the Iran section of Literature from the “Axis of Evil”? Isn’t it next to impossible to find out who the great writers are from the countries…
Translated from Arabic
An Interview with Jacqueline Loss
How did you select the Cuban pieces for the anthology, Literature from the “Axis of Evil”?I combed through Cuban print and Internet literary journals*Š and I spoke with translators……
An Interview with Hayun Jung
How easy was it for you, living in Seoul, to find work for the North Korea section of Literature from the “Axis of Evil” ?Because there are very few North Korean publications available to…
Drama Queen: An Interview with Ellen Stewart
By Liesl Schillinger
Ellen Stewart founded the LaMaMa Experimental Theater Company in 1961, and her groundbreaking vision helped establish the careers of Sam Shepard, Philip Glass, Harvey Fierstein, Robert Wilson, Mabou Mines,…
An Interview with Nuria Amat
Q. Here we are in Sarri , Barcelona, your birthplace and the scenario for your previous two novels. How come you decided to set your most recent novel, Queen Cocaine, in Colombia, between Bogotá and the…
Translated from Spanish
An Interview with Wladimir Kaminer
By Boris Fishman
Boris Fishman interviewed Wladimir Kaminer September 3, 2003.Boris Fishman: Did you start writing before emigrating to Germany? What did you do in the Soviet Union?Wladimir Kaminer: In the Soviet Union,…
Translated from Russian by the author
At Home in Exile: An Interview with Shimon Ballas
This interview appeared in slightly different form in Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing, edited and translated by Ammiel Alcalay (San Francisco: City Lights, 1996).Ammiel Alcalay: Starting with…
Translated from Hebrew by Ammiel Alcalay
Freedom Can Be a Nightmare: An Interview with Kader Abdolah
By Frits Abrahams
An exile's life is unstable. Ruled by fear, especially when you're so deeply involved with a language.
Translated from Dutch
A Dialogue with MuXin
By Toming Jun Liu
Prose is like a window; fiction is like a door. But it is not uncommon that he who should come in through the door jumps in through the window.
Translated from Chinese by the author