Posts featuring Jana Beňová

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

December 10, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Eva Wissting and Julia Sherwood

News this week from Sweden and Central Europe!

This week, we bring you news from Sweden and Central Europe! In Sweden, Eva Wissting reports on the annual Stockholm literature fair and recent acclaim for writer Merete Mazzarella, while Julia Sherwood highlights lively readings across Central Europe from the 2021 European Literature Days and Visegrad Café program. Read on to find out more!

Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden

The annual literary fair, Stockholms Litteraturmässa, was held last weekend, for the fourth time, after having been cancelled two years in a row due to renovations two years ago and last year because of COVID restrictions. The fair, which is a single day event with no entrance fee, is meant to highlight the diversity of Swedish publishers. This year, it included an exhibit of around fifty publishers and magazines. There were also author talks and lectures on subjects ranging from democracy, climate, translation ethics, to literature about real events, as well as storytime events for the younger visitors and poetry readings. The theme of “the printed book” was meant to reflect current affairs in the publishing industry and was chosen because it can no longer be taken for granted that literature is read in its conventional printed book form.

Last week, the Swedish Academy announced that it is awarding Merete Mazzarella the 2021 Finlandspris (Finland Prize), which amounts to just over ten thousand US dollars, for her work in the Swedish-speaking cultural life of Finland. Swedish is the first language of about five percent of the Finnish population and one of the two official languages in the country. Mazzarella, who was born in 1945 in Helsinki, is a literary scholar and a writer who has published over thirty books since her debut in 1979. Her most recent book, Från höst till höst (From autumn to autumn), is an essayistic journal about living as an elderly person through the pandemic and its restrictions. Her books have been translated to Finnish, Danish, and German. Previous recipients of the award include author and journalist Kjell Westö (The Wednesday Club).

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Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

September 10, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Julia Sherwood and Thirangie Jayatilake

Music festivals, poetry readings, and the launch of a new dawn in academic publishing in Sri Lanka!

This  week, our editors on the ground report from events and lectures, spanning large-scale festivals and intimate readings. Julia Sherwood discusses a spotlight on Slovak authors at Month of Authors’ Readings, and Thirangie Jayatilake is here with notes from a talk regarding the current state of Sri Lankan academic publishing. Read on for more!

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

Over the summer, literary organizers in Slovakia have tentatively returned to live events, mostly held in the open air. Audience sizes were kept smaller and featured mostly domestic authors because of continuing travel restrictions. Many of these events were streamed and can be watched later—this hybrid format may be one positive legacy of the pandemic.

Slovak writers were the guests of honour at Central Europe’s largest literary festival, the annual Month of Authors’ Readings (MAČ) organized by Větrné mlýny, a publishing house in Brno, Czech Republic and, on the Slovak side, by Literárnyklub.sk. Though the number of locations and participating writers was slightly scaled down, its ambition was certainly not, with thirty-one pairs of Slovak and Czech authors reading from their works every day of the month in both Bratislava and Brno, with some also travelling to Ostrava and Lviv in neighbouring Ukraine. Videos of all readings are available on the MAČ website alongside podcast interviews with the Slovak writers.

Although Pohoda, Slovakia’s largest outdoor music festival, was held from July 7 to 11 at its usual location—a former airfield in Trenčín—was limited to one thousand spectators per day, undaunted publisher Kali Bagala continued the tradition of presenting established as well as emerging authors at the Martinus Literary Tent (sponsored by the bookselling chain Martinus and also organized by Literárnyklub.sk). Young poets Richard L. Kramár and Michal Baláž introduced their second poetry collections, and Lukáš Onderčanin talked about Utópia v Leninovej záhrade [A Utopia in Lenin’s Garden], his documentary novel about some thousand idealistic men and women from Czechoslovakia who headed for Kyrgyzstan in the 1920s to help build socialism. Acclaimed poet and writer and past Asymptote contributor Jana Beňová discussed her latest non-fiction book of rambles around Bratislava, Flanérova košeľa (The Flâneur’s Shirt). There were readings by authors shortlisted for this year’s Anasoft Litera Prize, Ivana Gibová (Eklektik Bastard) and Zuzana Šmatláková (Nič sa nestalo/Nothing Happened),  as well as by Alenka Sabuchová whose novel Šeptuchy (The Whisperers) won the award in 2020. A sample from The Whisperers can be heard on the LIC_Online YouTube Channel, along with excerpts from several other books by contemporary Slovak writers in English and German translation. READ MORE…

‘Une Belle Inconnue’: Slovak Literature in Paris

April 17, 2019  |  in Dispatches  |  by Julia Sherwood and Marek Vadas

I spent four days at the stand, listening to the discussions and watching books being snatched from the counter.

As we reported in Asymptote’s weekly dispatch a few weeks ago, Slovak literature made waves at this year’s Salon du Livre in Paris, where thirty-seven books by Slovak authors, including twenty-five brand new translations, were presented. Also in attendance was writer and past Asymptote contributor Marek Vadas, on this occasion wearing his hat as staff member of LIC (Centre for Information on Literature), the agency responsible for promoting Slovak literature abroad. He has agreed to share his insider’s view of the book fair with us.

There are two kind of stands at international book fairs. The first attract attention because of their long-term reputation, literary stars and talent, thoughtful cultural policy and diplomacy or, simply, thanks to the money lavished on them. The second kind­—old-fashioned, lacking in invention or sophistication—rarely attract anyone apart from a narrow circle of specialists or the odd passerby. This year, all of a sudden, the Slovak stand found itself in the first category. What happened? READ MORE…

Spring 2014: The Space Between Languages

September 14, 2018  |  in 30issues30days  |  by Julia Sherwood

Translation requires an inner urgency that will make that which is different as close to the original as possible.

By April 2014, Asymptote has snowballed into a team of 60. Though I never signed up to lead so many team members, expansion is a matter of inevitability for a magazine that publishes new work from upwards of 25 countries every quarter (and that prides itself on editorial rigor). After all, if Asymptote section editors only relied on personal connections, it would only be a matter of time before available leads dried up. There is simply no substitute for local knowledge and, more importantly, local networking, since getting the author’s permission to run or translate his or her work is often the hardest part. (For the English Fiction Feature in the Spring 2014 issue alone, I sent solicitations, directly or indirectly, to Rohinton Mistry, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ha Jin, Chang-rae Lee, Tash Aw, Akhil Sharma, and Tao Lin—all in vain alas.) An entire book could probably be written about how Asymptote wooed author X or translator Y or guest artist Z to come on board as contributor. One particularly memorable (and—I assure you—not representative of the way we operate) episode comes to mind: When her phone call to an author was intercepted and met with a flat rejection by his secretary, a particularly persistent team member signed up for a two-day workshop conducted by said author. At an intermission, she casually makes the ask. The author agrees to discuss the matter the next day, at a restaurant. During dinner, our team member is subjected to intensive grilling before permission is finally granted to run and translate his work. Here to recount how we managed to ask Nobel laureate Herta Müller to come on board as contributor (and to give us permission to translate her moving essay into 8 additional languages) is editor-at-large Julia Sherwood:

I was invited to join the Asymptote team as editor-at-large for Slovakia after volunteering to translate into Slovak Jonas Hassen Khemiri´s Open Letter to Beatrice Ask, which appeared in 20 languages in the Spring 2013 issue of Asymptote. The journal had only been around for two years, but it had already established a reputation for featuring translations from a staggering array of languages and authors who had never been published in English. Slovak, my native language, had yet to make an appearance, so I immediately set out to source suitable texts in high-quality translations. My first success came when “Where to in Bratislava”, a story by Jana Beňová and translated by Beatrice Smigasiewicz, was chosen for the Winter 2014 issue. Soon after that I managed something of a scoop: bringing to Asymptote “The Space Between Languages,” an essay by Nobel laureate Herta Müller. READ MORE…

Winter 2014: A Rookie Among Giants

September 13, 2018  |  in 30issues30days  |  by Alexander Dickow

Living now under the shadow of Trump, the contents of the issue seem even more desperately near to us.

It takes a while for the blog to hit its stride. Editing to a quarterly schedule is different than editing to a daily one, we quickly discover. It does not help that both ‘founding’ blog editors jump ship within three months (Nick’s elegiac last post goes up on 30 October; Zack’s 31 December). Fortunately, the rest rally and get us through. (One bright spot from that time is Patty Nash’s breezy roundups—a breath of fresh air.) Five weeks after it inaugurates, Aditi Machado’s post on the blog gets picked up by Poetry’s Harriet Blog, joining mentions in BBC Culture and The Guardian. The Guardian article gives a nod to Asymptote’s first-ever London event in January 2014, also the first of many multi-continental events in honor of our 3rd anniversary. These go on to include panels and readings in New York, Zagreb, Boston, Philadelphia, Shanghai, Berlin, and Sydney over the next three months. A point of pride: determined to organize an event in Asia, I somehow manage to pull off a reading without a single team member on the ground, thanks to NYU Shanghai, contributors Eleanor Goodman and Eun Joo Kim, and a friend who happens to pass through. In New York, under real threat of snowpocalypse, Asymptote supporters Eliot Weinberger, Robyn Creswell, Idra Novey, Jeffrey Yang, and Daniella Gitlin all show up to our anniversary event at Housing Works emceed by then Assistant Managing Editor, Eric M. B. Becker, to read alongside Cory Tamler, first prize-winner of our inaugural Close Approximations translation contest (as written up in WWB Daily’s dispatch here). Here to get you excited for the Winter 2014 issue (featuring, among others, a translator’s note that I got J. M. Coetzee to write) is Alexander Dickow, runner-up to that very contest and Asymptote Communications Manager since April 2017. But, first, check out Winter 2014’s issue trailer—probably our best ever—by then Video Producer Sarah Chan.

I knew of Asymptote since its inception in 2011, but it was only in January 2014 that I was named runner-up in the first edition of Asymptote’s Close Approximations translation contest. That contest has had a lasting impact on my work: I later won a Pen/Heim Translation Fund Grant to finish translating Sylvie Kandé’s Neverending Quest for the Other Shore, which was first showcased in Asymptote and is now under consideration by a major publisher. Evoking the Winter 2014 issue of Asymptote, then, cannot not be a little about my own relationship to Asymptote, even though I was an eager young rookie among the issue’s giants— J. M. Coetzee, Jana Beňová, and Michael Hofmann, to name a few. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

November 17, 2017  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Cassie Lawrence, Julia Sherwood, Kelsey Woodburn, and Paul M. Worley

The most important literary news from Slovakia, the UK, Mexico and Guatemala.

This week brings us some exciting news from Slovakia, the United Kingdom, and Mexico, thanks to Editors-at-Large Julia Sherwood, Paul Worley, and Kelsey Woodburn as well as Senior Executive Assistant, Cassie Lawrence. Here’s to another week!

Julia Sherwood, Asymptote Editor-at-Large for Slovakia:

Two festivals concluded the hectic literary festival season in Slovakia. LiKE 2017, a contemporary literature and multimedia festival was held in Košice, the eastern metropolis, running parallel with the 14th Žilina Literature Festival in the country’s north. The latter, held from September 28 to October 8 in the repurposed New Synagogue and entitled Fakt?Fakt! (Fictitious Truth or Truthful Fiction?), focused on the alarming spread of disinformation, pre-empting the decision by Collins Dictionary to declare “fake news” the official word of the year 2017. The programme featured student discussions, workshops on how to distinguish fact from fiction, as well as readings and meetings with literary critics and writers. Michal Hvorecký discussed his latest novel, Trol (The Troll), a dark dystopia set in the murky world of Russian fake news factories, which has acquired a frightening new relevance far exceeding what the author had anticipated when he set out to write his book a few years ago.

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