In this episode, we look at the concept of home; how we shape it and how it shapes us. Yardenne Greenspan takes a look at literature of trauma, bringing us work by two Israeli authors Yonatan Berg and Ron Dahan, who recount the horrors they have seen (and have been a part of) in their country, as well as Yehiel De-Nur better known by his pen name, Ka-Tzetnik 135633, a Holocaust survivor who in bitter detail recounts his time in Auschwitz. What unites these authors is their experience with LSD. Flashbacks to their traumatic experiences directly inform upon their writing and present the reader with a complex portrait of trauma. Daniel Goulden brings us a report from the Brooklyn Book Fair with recordings of Jonathan Lethem, Vivian Gornick, John Leguizamo, Cecily Wong, and Chinelo Okparanta discussing their respective homes and how that informs upon their work.
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Produced by: Daniel Goulden, Sally Decker, Yardenne Greenspan, Florian Duijsens, and Justin Maki. Featuring: Alessio Franko and Piyali Syam Music: “Running Waters” by Jason Shaw, “The Elevator Bossa Nova” by Ben Shaw, “Blue Draggish” by the Underscore Orkestra, “Blue Moon” by Ainst Char, and “Podcast Theme” by Sally Decker. Creative Commons licenses can be found at http://freemusicarchive.org/ and http://audionautix.com/. Some changes were made to these tracks.
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Yardenne Greenspan has an MFA in Fiction and Translation from Columbia University. In 2011 she received the American Literary Translators’ Association Fellowship. Her translation of Some Day, by Shemi Zarhin (New Vessel Press), was chosen for World Literature Today’s 2013 list of notable translations. Her full-length translations also include Tel Aviv Noir, Edited by Etgar Keret and Assaf Gavron (Akashic Books), and Alexandrian Summer by Yitzhak Gormezano Goren (New Vessel Press). Yardenne’s writing and translations can be found in the New Yorker, Haaretz, Guernica, Ploughshares, the Massachusetts Review, and Words Without Borders, among other publications.
Daniel Goulden is Asymptote’s new Podcast Editor and former Assistant Editor. He currently lives in Brooklyn, where he works on a variety of new media projects including an upcoming podcast and the webseries Between the Sidewalk and the Street, as well as old media projects including translations from Russian and good old-fashioned writing.