If you are anywhere near the Pacific Northwest, head on over to Asymptote’s booth at the AWP, or the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in Seattle, Washington. Good news is that after widespread outcry, the conference is open to the bookish riffraff public, which means you should absolutely come check out the literati—including our managing editor Tara FitzGerald and Central Asia editor-at-large Alex Cigale! They’ll be answering your questions and raffling away translated goodies.
AWP is certainly a prize jewel in the tiara of literary soirées, but it isn’t the end-all: if you’re stuck in the perpetual writing conference that is New York City (poor you), here’s an event of interest: the Festival Neue Literatur showcases the diversity of German-language writing from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. The Russian-language Rossica Prize for translation has announced its impressive 2014 shortlist, once again attesting to the vitality of contemporary Russian literature abroad. The Ghana Literary Prize has been in the works for quite some time—here’s why it’s important in mobilizing Ghana’s burgeoning literary community. American author Shalom Auslander (what a brilliant translation-y name, if we’ve ever heard one!) has snagged the 2013 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize for his Anne Frank-inspired Hope: A Tragedy. One Caribbean Media has announced its ten-member longlist for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, featuring poetry, fiction, and non-fiction from the Caribbean.
Perhaps it might be a good idea to recommit to reading only women writers in 2014—2013’s VIDA report, committed to promoting and recognizing equal gender representation in print media, has released its yearly statistics for 2013, and literary publications are still over-represented by men. The litmags strike back: here are two rebuttals by mainstays Tin House and The Believer. Despite these disheartening numbers, we’re hard-pressed to say that writers themselves aren’t vocally committed to equality: Nigerian writers (such as Chimamanda Adichie and Binyavanga Wainaina) speak out against the country’s harsh anti-gay laws. Hailing from India, a similar cause: here’s beautiful plea to decriminalize love—complete with a poem by writer Vikram Seth. Using social media, journalists join forces across the globe to protest the unfair imprisonment of Al-Jazeera journalists in Egypt. Protesters in conflicted Venezuela similarly take to social media, adding a digital platform to widespread grassroots protests. Today in 1947, the 228 Incident occurred in Taiwan—here’s a touching tribute translated by Asymptote’s own Editor-in-Chief. Finally, French writers reserve the right to protest a protest—the country’s right wing’s proposed censorship of a children’s book about nudity countered by naked artists.
Reading (and writing!) habits change each week. If you aren’t sure if they said “twerking” in the seventeenth-century New England your historical novel is set in, you can double check linguistic historical accuracy (and avoid embarrassing anachronisms) at the click of a button. Data mining is a hot-button topic, and the increasing impossibility of remaining anonymous online is no secret—but thanks to forensic linguistics you can’t hide who you are in print, either. Translation is the name of the game at Linguee, a German bilingual dictionary website that has recently announced 218 new language pairs (even the most talented translators require assistance every now and then).
That’s all for now—hope your weekend is like, totally, like, awesome. Maybe you’ll enjoy some good old-fashioned awards-season buzz (just be glad Socrates isn’t hosting the pre-awards red carpet).