Place: Central America

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

February 5, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, Clémence Lucchini, and José García Escobar

The latest news from Central America, Hong Kong, and France!

This week our writers bring you news from Central America, Hong Kong, and France. In Central America, renowned Guatemalan writer Eduardo Haldon has released his latest novel, Cancón, and Savladoran writer Claudia Hernández’s book Slash and Burn has been released in English translation by & Other Stories. In Hong Kong, literary journal the Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine has pertinently published a special feature about “Distance,” while in France, Italian writer Sandro Veronesi has won the Foreign Book Prize for Le Colibri, to be published in English translation in spring. Read on to find out more! 

José García Escobar, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Central America

Guatemalan poet Carmen Lucía Alvarado was recently nominated for the Rhysling Award for her poem El vacío se conjuga entre tus manos (The void blends in your hands), translated by Toshiya Kamei. Read the poem in English and Spanish here. Famed Guatemalan writer Eduardo Halfon released his new novel called Canción (Song). Published by Libros del Asteroide, his latest book tells a new chapter of the history of Halfon’s family, centering on his maternal grandfather and his kidnap during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996). You can read an excerpt of Canción in English at The New York Review of Books site.

Also in Guatemala, the veteran poet and journalist Ana María Rodas released a new collection of short stories entitled Antigua para principiantes (Antigua for beginners). This new book includes several of Ana María’s most renowned short stories, plus other unpublished stories. This marks Ediciones del Pensativo’s first book of the year.

Additionally, in early January, & Other Stories published Slash and Burn, by the Salvadoran short story writer Claudia Hernández. The book was translated into English by Julia Sanches, who has translated the work of writers such as Daniel Galera (Brazil) and Noemi Jaffe (Brazil). READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

December 11, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Eva Wissting, José García Escobar, and Josefina Massot

The latest news from Central America, Sweden, and Argentina!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Central America, Sweden, and Argentina. A poetry festival featuring Latin American heavy hitters has just wrapped up in Guatemala, where, in addition, a new YA title draws from a military coup and a reprint tackles guerrilla warfare; Sweden’s most prestigious literary prize has been awarded in the fiction, non-fiction, and children’s book categories, and the Swedish Arts Council is trying to keep the literary sector afloat; a series of sundry voices gathered at a non-fiction festival in Argentina, where they spoke about how hard it is to narrate the pandemic—and how easy it is to honor another viral phenomenon. Read on to find out more!

José García Escobar, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Central America

Guatemala just finished the sixteenth edition of the celebrated Festival Internacional de Poesía de Quetzaltenango (FIPQ). As a virtual festival, it included readings and presentations of notorious poets including Cesar Augusto Carvalho (Brasil), Isabel Guerrero (Chile), Yousif Alhabob (Sudan), Rosa Chavez (Guatemala), and Raúl Zurita (Chile). Relive FIPQ’s closing ceremony with a performance of the Guatemalan indie-pop band, Glass Collective, here.

Guatemalan novelist and translator David Unger just put out a new YA book. Called Sleeping with the Light On, it is based on how the author and his family experienced the 1954 US-backed military coup, which overthrew the democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz. Sleeping with the Light On (Groundwood Books) is illustrated by Carlos Aguilera.

Finally, before the end of the year Catafixia Editorial will reissue two essential books of Guatemalan history and literature, Yolanda Colom’s Mujeres en la alborada and Eugenia Gallardo’s No te apresures en llegar a la Torre de Londres porque la Torre de Londres no es el Big Ben. READ MORE…

Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

October 16, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Chamini Kulathunga, David Boyd, José García Escobar, and Julia Sherwood

The latest literary news from Japan, Slovakia, Sri Lanka, and Central America!

This week, our writer’s bring you the latest news from Japan, Slovakia, Sri Lanka, and Central America. In Japan, renowned writer and symbol of the #MeToo movement Shiori Ito is poised to reach a wider international audience with the forthcoming translation of her memoir, Black Box , and was named one of the “100 Most Influential People of 2020” by Time Magazine. In Slovakia, three prominent Slovak writers feature in a new interactive map made by University College London and Eva Luka was named as winner of the national poetry award. In Sri Lanka, October’s National Reading Month has begun, with winners of the recently announced literary awards selling fast. And in Central America, Guatemalan poet Giovany Emanuel Coxolcá Tohom won the Premio de Poesía Editorial Praxis, whilst José Luis Perdomo Orellana took home Guatemala’s most prestigious literary prize, the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature. Read on to find out more!  

David Boyd, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Japan

In September, Time Magazine named Shiori Ito one of the “100 Most Influential People of 2020.” Ito is a journalist, activist, and renowned symbol of Japan’s #MeToo movement, who—in the words of sociologist Chizuko Ueno—“has forever changed life for Japanese women with her brave accusation of sexual violence against her harasser.” Ito’s account of her experiences, Black Box, which was first published in Japanese in 2017 by Bungei Shunju, is due to be published next year in an English translation by Allison Markin Powell, whose previous translations include The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami and The Boy in the Earth by Fuminori Nakamura. Powell’s translation of Ito’s work will be published by Tilted Axis Press in the United Kingdom and Feminist Press in the United States.

Since the book’s publication in 2017, Powell says, “Ito’s message seems only to have grown more important, more urgent. Black Box is not a rape memoir. It’s a manifesto to tear down the system. Ito methodically maps out the ways in which institutions failed her, and how almost everyone attempted to gaslight her at each stage. Her perseverance is an inspiration.”

On her own experience working to bring Black Box into English, Powell says, “I’ve had to develop strategies so as not to take on too much of the trauma myself.”

In August, Ito sued LDP member Mio Sugita, “claiming that [Sugita’s] repeated ‘likes’ of tweets abusing her character constituted defamation,” as reported in The Mainichi. Sugita, who is known for having called the LGBT community “unproductive” in the past, has this month courted controversy once again, by admitting that she said “women lie” about sexual assault, after initially denying having made such a remark. As noted in The Japan Times, Sugita’s party was “slow and lukewarm” in their response. The lawmaker has not faced any penalties. READ MORE…

Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

August 21, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Daljinder Johal, José García Escobar, and Xiao Yue Shan

The latest literary news from China, the United Kingdom, and Central America!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from the United Kingdom, Central America, and China. In China, the Shanghai Book Fair explodes with glitz and glamour in suspicious contrast with a supposed dedication to books and reading. In the United Kingdom, important translation mentorship and courses are adapting to online programmes to continue to discover and help emerging translators. And in Central America, Centroamérica Cuenta festival has created an exciting programme for its online events, whilst Guatemala’s Catafixia Editorial has announced new publications by three famed Guatemalan and Chilean poets. Read on to find out more! 

Xiao Yue Shan, Blog Editor, reporting for China

On August 12, the 2020 Shanghai Book Fair began its week-long occupation of the grandiose Shanghai Exhibition Center, bringing with it the usual munificence of new publications, symposiums, readings, and exhibitions. While large-scale, highly attended events may seem unwise at the moment, organizers ensured the public that plenty of precautions were being taken, with the keywords of “safety” and “brilliance” operating in tandem to cohere the theme of this year’s fair. Brilliant safety—or, alternatively, safe brilliance.

True to China’s dedication to establishing itself as a technological trailblazer and the foremost nation in holding dominion over the future—accentuated by the threat of COVID-19 against physical bookstores (and brick-and-mortar spaces in general)—this year’s fair adopted the modus operandi of utilizing the new to reform the old, as opposed to incorporating novel contents and technologies into the existing framework. What this means for the ancient medium of reading and writing soon became clear as the fair revealed a buffet of stratagems to morph the existing methods into multi-faceted, multi-sensory activities. Featuring isolated reading “pods,” cloud-based tours and libraries, virtual reality reading “experiences,” augmented reality reading “supplements,” “sound castles” which seemingly exist solely to provide to children books void of their need to be actually read, interactive reading featuring audio-visual installations, and robot “writing.” The embarrassment of instruments and innovations—which have become increasingly familiar to the arguably more tech-savvy Chinese population—appears to be entirely genuine in its motivation to increase readerships and engagement with literature, but also has the slightly queasy effect of concealing the book, and the function of reading itself, underneath a nebulous aggregate of superficial entertainments and twinkly charms. This is exemplified perhaps most sardonically by the AI library in the aforementioned sound castle, in which one may pick up a paper book and immediately be transported into an immersive, intuitive reading platform—what, one is likely to wonder, is the point of this book, when it performs a function identical to that of a switch or a button?

This obligation of technology to expedite and accentuate our experiences strikes me as one of its most suspect ends, in compliance with its subduing and totalizing tendencies; those among us who love reading acknowledge it as an active, pursuant undertaking, and engorging the transference of language with manufactured visions and kinetics undermines its innate and sublime power to invoke those senses and impressions by the individuating motor of human imagination. As enthusiasm for, and adoption of such technologies rise, a decline in creatively productive, sensually complex language will surely follow. Safe brilliance, indeed.
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Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

June 19, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Allison Braden, Clémence Lucchini, and José García Escobar

This week’s latest news from Argentina, Central America, and the United States!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Argentina, Central America, and the United States. In Argentina, Chris Andrews’s forthcoming translation of César Aira’s novel The Divorce was awarded a PEN Translates award; in Guatemala, a new posthumous collection by Kaqchikel Maya writer Luis de Lión was published; and in the United States, bookstores and libraries have been supporting the Black Lives Matter protests by publishing recommended reading lists. Read on to find out more! 

Allison Braden, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Argentina

English PEN announced the winners of its PEN Translates award earlier this month, and among them was Chris Andrews’s translation of César Aira’s The Divorce, forthcoming from And Other Stories in 2021. The Argentine author and translator continues to have a powerful influence both at home and abroad. His short novel Artforum, published in March by New Directions, earned glowing praise in an April NPR review: “Aira is unencumbered. He does what he does, and what we receive is giddy, unquestionably self-indulgent, and yet absolutely perfect.” The review, it should be noted, doesn’t reference the translator, Katherine Silver. It’s almost unbelievable that Aira can work at such a remarkable pace—he publishes two or three short novels a year—and continue to get such good reviews. (His most recent release in Argentina, Fulgentius, was also lauded.) The good news is that his pace of writing ensures work for translators and new releases into English for years to come.

Perhaps soon there will be a service to have Aira’s new releases delivered to your door monthly. Buenos Aires is a hotbed for independent publishers, and book clubs have sprung up as a way to promote and discuss new offerings. In a market inundated with new books each month—at least until recently—the clubs also provide vetting and a way to make sense of the noise. Some require members to obtain the book themselves, but others do the task of curating and sending members their selections each month. Pez Banana works this way (the name, which means banana fish, is a homage to Salinger). Founded by two veterans of the Buenos Aires publishing industry, Florencia Ure and Santiago Llach, the service sends a new release novel and reading guide each month. Among other book club choices, Bukku also sends out a monthly selection, and the decision of which service to subscribe to may come down to what else is in the box: Bukku deliveries include the book, a bookmark, a playlist curated by the author, and a surprise book-related, locally designed gift. Sign me up.  READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

May 1, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, Daniel Persia, and José García Escobar

Despite setbacks and delays, literature around the world is still going strong.

This week, our writers bring you the latest literary news from Brazil, Central America, and Hong Kong. In Brazil, literary communities are still going strong via online events and livestreams; in Central America, journalists and writers have been reaching audiences through online videos; and in Hong Kong, universities have been putting lecture series online for the public. Read on to find out more!

Daniel Persia, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Brazil

In the midst of rising political tensions, presidential disregard for the ongoing pandemic, and increased social distancing measures at the local and state levels, writers and readers have come together to help shape a new virtual literary landscape in Brazil. Over the past few weeks, with travel restricted and residents urged to stay in their homes, I’ve tuned in via Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Youtube, Google Hangouts, Zoom, and more to engage with authors from across the country. With some livestreams reaching two thousand-plus users in a single session, one thing remains clear: the Brazilian literary community continues strong, with readers now more than ever searching for opportunities to engage in dialogue and debate. To stay connected, you can follow writers and publishers on social media; subscribe to email newsletters; and check out how your local bookstore might be engaged with virtual encounters! READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? (Nov 2019)

November 14, 2019  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

From being appointed President of ALTA to launching new poetry collections, Asymptote staff have been dazzling the world!

Is Asymptote edited anonymously? That was what someone seemed to suggest recently on Twitter—as if we were a bunch of bots. As a matter of fact, our editor-in-chief—and only full-time team member—is based in Taipei (although he made an appearance in a London translation symposium recently, which you can read about below), where he collaborates with 90+ team members from around the globe. Being virtual means our team members are often active (and physically present) literary citizens in other arenas. For evidence, look no further than this quarterly update celebrating our staff’s recent accomplishments.

Chris Tanasescu (aka MARGENTO, editor-at-large for Romania & Moldova) jointly presented with Diana Inkpen a paper on “Poetry beyond Poetry: Applying GraphPoem Outcomes in DH, NLP, and Performance” at DH Benelux 2019.

Please join us in congratulating Ellen Elias-Bursać, contributing editor, appointed to President of the American Literary Translators Association on Nov 7.

Editor-at large for Slovakia Julia Sherwood‘s most recent co-translations with Peter Sherwood Big Love by Balla and The Night Circus and Other Stories by Ursula Kovalyk were recently reviewed in The London Magazine by assistant editor Andreea Scridon.

José García Escobar, editor-at-large for Central America, published the first installment in a four-part series about last year’s migrant caravan at the Evergreen Review on Oct 30. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

September 27, 2019  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Anna Aresi, Hodna Bentali Gharsallah Nuernberg, and José García Escobar

Our wide-ranging literary dispatches this week cover protests, translations, and debuts.

This week’s dispatches report on a four-day literature festival in Italian-speaking Bellinzona in Switzerland, a new podcast dedicated exclusively to Guatemalan and Central American literature, as well as news of the arrest of journalist Hajar Raissouni in Morocco and a theatre group resisting such censorship and freedom of the press violation with a performance of Don Quixote.

Anna Aresi, Copy Editor, reporting from Switzerland

An interest in mapping (often the result of conquests and colonization) and remapping—rethinking what was erased and systematically left out in the mapping process—is at the core of Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli’s latest novel. In Lost Children Archive, mapping is related to sound: “Focusing on sound forced me to hear as opposed to seeing, it forced me into a different rhythm. You cannot consume sound immediately,” she explains, “when focusing on sound, you have to sit with it, let it unfold.” It is within this rhythm, she adds, that English emerged as the language that was conducive to the writing of this novel, which she had begun writing in both English and Spanish simultaneously.

Luiselli reflects on this and other aspects of her writing in an intense conversation with Italian writer Claudia Durastanti, in the intimate setting of Bellinzona’s social theater. 

Every year, Bellinzona—the capital of Swiss Italophone Canton Ticino—hosts Babel Festival, a four-day event entirely dedicated to literature and translation. This year’s fourteenth edition, entitled “You will not speak my language,” explored the limits and boundaries of language and literature, as well as languages that are “imagined, invented, despised, censored, regional, silent, visual, and enigmatic.”

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Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

August 30, 2019  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by José García Escobar and Julia Sherwood

From Olga Tokarczuk to Ana María Rodas, read on for the latest in global literature!

As Italo Calvino said; “Literature is like an eye that can perceive beyond the chromatic scale to which Politics is sensitive.” This week, our editors are spanning Poland and Central America this week to bring you news of literature festivals, celebrations, and renowned writers bringing international regard to their home countries, but also, reports of literature in acts of reclamation, restoration, and freedom. To reinstate humanity into issues that seem beyond individual control is a necessary use of language, and around the world, writers are taking up the responsibility.

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Poland

In every corner of Poland, book lovers had a literary festival to choose from this summer. The Borderland Foundation, an international centre for dialogue in Sejny on the Polish/Lithuanian border, hosted a programme of discussions, workshops, and concerts from June through August, with guests including Yale University historian Timothy Snyder, who discussed The Road to Unfreedom with the centre’s director, Krzysztof Czyżewski (photos here). In July, the Non-Fiction festival in Kraków featured acclaimed non-fiction writers of the likes of Małgorzata Rejmer as well as rising new stars of literary reportage, such as Katarzyna Puzyńska, who has made a successful switch from best-selling crime to non-fiction, publishing two books of interviews with Polish policemen. Sopot Literacki, a literary festival in the Baltic Sea resort of Sopot, showcased literature from the UK from August 15 to 18, featuring, among others, novelist Sarah Perry, illustrator and comic book author Katie Green, and Reni Eddo-Lodge talking about her book Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, as well as a debate among literary scholars on the current readings of the Frankenstein myth. And in the final week of August, Sopot’s sister city Gdynia renames itself the City of the Word, staging a literary festival focusing on Polish writers before the September 1 announcement of the 2019 Gdynia Literature Prize.

Jacek Dehnel, one of the authors appearing at the Gdynia festival this week, presented his latest book, Ale z naszymi umarłymi (But Together With Our Dead), a viciously funny and chilling apocalyptic satire in which Polish zombies go on the rampage and take over the world. The novel is appearing at a time in which rabid anti-LGBT propaganda, spread by the ruling PiS party in the run-up to the general election this coming October, is receiving vocal support from the Catholic Church, which has compared the LGBT movement to a ‘plague’, and a conservative weekly, Gazeta Polska, recently went so far as to print “LGBT-free zone” stickers. This summer saw a record number of Gay Pride parades held in twenty-three cities across the country in defiance of the hate campaign, and while most of the parades went off peacefully, march participants in Białystok, in the east of the country, came under violent attack from far-right protesters. Dehnel, who travelled to Białystok from his home town of Warsaw to address the crowd and has vividly captured the events in this harrowing report, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

June 28, 2019  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Daniel Persia, José García Escobar, and Xiao Yue Shan

The glorious fragrance of fresh literary works, hot off the presses from around the world.

It seems that national literatures around the world are shaping their next representatives as we receive further updates of new works by authors from around the globe. From publications by a Guatemalan indie press, to a remarkably young award honouree in Brazil, to a historic list of nominations for the most prestigious literary prizes in Japan, our editors are bringing you a glimpse of what is in your—and your bookshelf’s—future. 

José García Escobar, Editor-at Large, reporting from Central America 

The biggest book fair in Central America, the Feria Internacional del Libro en Guatemala (FILGUA) is only a few weeks away. And like every year, on the days leading to FILGUA, the Guatemalan indie press Catafixia has been announcing its newest drafts. Mid-July, Catafixia will put out books by Manuel Orestes Nieto (Panama), Jacinta Escudos (El Salvador), and Gonçalo M. Tavares (Angola-Portugal). 

Additionally, this year’s FILGUA marks the tenth anniversary of Catafixia, which has helped launch the careers of poets like Vania Vargas and Julio Serrano Echeverría.

Last month, Costa Rican press los tres editores put out Trayéndolo todo de regreso a casa by Argentine author Patricio Pron, who won the Alfaguara Prize in 2019. los tres editores have previously published books by Luis Chavez, Mauro Libertella, and Valeria Luiselli. 

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Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

May 17, 2019  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by José García Escobar and Layla Benitez-James

From literary festivals to prize winners, this is the week in world literature.

This week, dispatches from Spain and Central America witness the rise of Spanish-language writers and events that support and promote the literatures of up-and-comers alongside established stars of the field. To celebrate the community of world literature is a necessary joy, and our editors are here with the revelry. 

Layla Benitez-James, Podcast Editor, reporting from Spain  

It was time for big celebrations in a tiny, trilingual bookshop located in the centre of Madrid on the night of May 10. Francesca Reece had been named winner of the second ever Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, and ten other writers were being honoured alongside her in the publication of Eleven Stories 2019, the shortlist for the competition which follows after the sold out original Eleven Stories from their inaugural 2018 contest.

The event celebrated the launch of the mini collection with readings from ten of the eleven shortlisted authors. The project is an international prize based out of the bookshop Desperate Literature in Madrid, but with partners in London, Paris, and New York, it has drastically evolved over just its first year. After feedback from the inaugural winner and shortlist, the founders decided to add a one week stay as the artist-in-residence at the Civitella Ranieri in Italy, and a consultation with a New York literary agent who works for Foundry Literary + Media. With the aim of giving as much support to emerging and non-traditional writers as possible, they sought to develop additional assistance alongside a cash prize and are looking to continue this line of development for next year’s iteration. This year they partnered with five literary journals: 3:AM, Structo Magazine, Helter Skelter, The London Magazine, and The Second Shelf (women only), who will publish stories from the shortlist throughout the year. They also added a collaboration with the Casa Ana in Andalucia, who selected Jay G Ying from the shortlist for another residency.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

January 4, 2019  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Janani Ganesan and Lee Yew Leong

Expired copyrights, new literature, and the difficulties faced by translated literature feature in this week's updates.

As we welcome the New Year in, join our Editor-in-Chief, Yew Leong, and one of our Assistant Managing Editors, Janani, as they review the latest in world translation news. From the trials and tribulations faced by indigenous languages to new literary journals and non-mainstream literature, there’s plenty to catch up on!

Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief:

Though it was actually in 2016 that the UNESCO declared this year, 2019, to be the Year of Indigenous Languages, recent unhappy events have revealed how of the moment this designation has proven to be. A 7-year-old Guatemalan girl who was unable to communicate how sick she was died while in U.S. Border Patrol Custody—only one of several thousands of undocumented immigrants who speak an indigenous language like Zapotec, Mixtec, Triqui, Chatino, Mixe, Raramuri, Purepecha, or one of many Mayan languages, according to The Washington Post. Jair Bolsonaro, the new Brazilian president who has made insulting comparisons of indigenous communities living in protected lands to “animals in zoos,” wasted no time in undermining their rights within hours of taking office and tweeted ominously about “integrating” these citizens. On a brighter note, Canada will likely be more multilingual this year as the Trudeau administration looks set to enforce the Indigenous Languages Act before the Canadian election this year. The act will not only “recognize the use of Indigenous languages as a ‘fundamental right,’ but also standardize them,” thereby assisting their development across communities. Keen to explore literary works from some of these languages? With poems from indigenous languages ranging from Anishinaabemowin to Cree, Asymptote’s Fall 2016 Special Feature will be your perfect gateway to literature by First Nations writers.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

October 5, 2018  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Ilker Hepkaner, José García Escobar, and Scott Weintraub

We're back with weekly updates in world literature from around the globe!

We’re back with our regular Friday column featuring weekly dispatches from our Asymptote team, telling you more about events in world literature. Join us on a journey to Guatemala and Chile, before heading to New York City, to find out more about the latest in world literature.

José García Escobar, Editor-At-Large, reporting from Guatemala:

We begin with great news coming from the Guatemalan author Eduardo Halfon whose novel Mourning (Duelo in Spanish) got shortlisted for the 2018 Kirkus Prize. Halfon, whom we interviewed for our blog last June, is sitting beside other fantastic writers such as Ling Ma, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, and Lauren Groff. Mourning, published by Bellevue Literary Press, was translated into English by Lisa Dillman and Daniel Hahn. The winner will be announced on Thursday, October 25, 2018.

Additionally, Halfon was just declared the recipient of the 2018 Miguel Angel Asturias National Prize in Literature, the most important literary prize in Guatemala.

On a much sadder note, recently, one of Guatemala’s most influential and emblematic poets, Julio Fausto Aguilera has passed away at the age of 88. He won the Miguel Angel Asturias prize, in 2002; he was part of the arts collective Saker-Ti, and one of the founding members of Nuevo Signo—arguably one of the most important literary groups in Central America. He wrote close to twenty books of poetry, and his family confirmed that he left two manuscripts that they hope will get published soon. Francisco Morales Santos, his friend en Nuevo Signo’s editor, called Julio Fausto a worthy and unbreakable man. Many other writers such as Vania Vargas and the most recent winner of the Miguel Angel Asturias Prize, Francisco Alejandro Méndez, also mourned the death of Aguilera.

To read more about Aguilera and Nuevo Signo, click here.

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On Translating Indigenous Languages

June 7, 2018  |  in Essays  |  by Paul Worley

The translator bears a particular kind of ethical responsibility towards the text, the poet, and poet’s community.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but in 2018 translating Indigenous literatures in the Américas from Indigenous languages and/or Spanish is a political act. Even prior to now, at dinner parties and other settings for droll conversation in the United States, people have often perked up when I mention that I study Mesoamerican languages and cultures. With an interest typically grounded in lost civilizations, ancient mysteries, and, occasionally, UFOs, they usually then follow up with an inquiry as to why, if I study dead languages, I didn’t opt to study Latin, ancient Greek, or Biblical Hebrew instead. When I assert that no, Maya languages such as Yucatec and Tsotsil are far from dead, many people refuse to believe it and are more than happy to contest the point.

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