Posts featuring Petr Borkovec

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

October 21, 2022  |  in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup  |  by Areeb Ahmad, Julia Sherwood, and Sofija Popovska

The latest in literary news from Macedonia, India, and the Czech Republic!

This week, our editors from around the world are reporting on trailblazing new releases, award winners, and literary festivals! From the return of the Dhaka Literature Festival after two years on hiatus to Czech comic artists at the International Comic Art Festival, read on to learn more!

Areeb Ahmad, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India

Initially announced in July, more information has emerged regarding the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation in a feature published by World Without Borders. The prize, sponsored by Armory Square Ventures with a jury of acclaimed translation specialists from around the world, aims to “recognize an outstanding translator of South Asian Literature into English.” The winning work will be published by Open Letter Books while excerpts from finalists will appear in WWB. The founders of the prize intend to highlight literatures that are “all but invisible outside South Asia” in the global English-speaking sphere, joining the JCB Prize for Literature in promoting translated Indian literatures both at home and abroad.

The acclaimed Naga writer, Temsula Ao, passed away on October 9 at the age of seventy-six. In her obituary, Chitra Ahanthem explores her legacy and bibliography, highlighting Ao’s focus on the Naga community and her resistance to the homogenizing impulse to club writing from all the Northeast Indian states into a singular literature, which would dismiss the differences across communities and tribes both within and beyond each state. Meanwhile, the 2022-23 cohort of the National Centre for Writing’s Emerging Translator Mentorships was recently announced. Among its recipients, Vaibhav Sharma was awarded the Saroj Lal Mentorship in Hindi and will be mentored by the International Booker Prize winner, Daisy Rockwell.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

October 11, 2019  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Filip Noubel, Julia Sherwood, Poupeh Missaghi, and Xiao Yue Shan

On Terezín, censorship in Iran, thrilling new Uzbek titles, and the long-awaited Nobel Prize for Literature announcement.

This week is an exciting one in the world of literature, and our editors are bringing you dispatches from the ground. Xiao Yue Shan discusses the winners of the 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature. Julia Sherwood reports on a march from Prague to Terezín, a concentration camp established by the Nazis during their occupation of the Czech Republic. Poupeh Missaghi gives an account of literary podcasts in Iran, as well as the government’s role in quality control and censorship. Filip Noubel brings us an introduction of several new titles from the established authors of Uzbekistan. 

Xiao Yue Shan, Assistant Blog Editor, reporting on the Nobel Prize for Literature

The long-awaited Nobel Prize in Literature announcement of 2019 was prefaced by the usual barrage of news and predictions—some cynical, some vaguely hopeful, and most of which hedged their bets on women writers and/or authors who did not write predominantly in English. After the controversy of last year’s award (or the lack thereof), it followed a natural trajectory that our current politics lead us to search for brilliant literary representation that breaches the limits of our accepted canon of well-celebrated white men, and the Swedish Academy had seemed eager to prove themselves to be advocates for social progress, as they once again took on the role of alighting the flames of literary luminaries that will forever be enshrined as embodiments of success in the world of letters.

In a case of half-fulfillment, the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature went to Asymptote contributor Olga Tokarczuk, and the 2019 Prize was awarded to the prolific Austrian writer Peter Handke. The latter aroused quite the maelstrom of negative responses, even with most still acknowledging his significant contributions and his fearlessly bold oeuvre, while the former is being hailed as a well-deserving, original, feminist voice, standing in the exact spot of where the spotlight should be shone.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

June 21, 2019  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Julia Sherwood, Lou Sarabadzic, Poupeh Missaghi, and Shelly Bhoil

Get close up and personal with global literary happenings.

Let language be free! This week, our editors are reporting on a myriad of literary news including the exclusion of Persian/Farsi language services on Amazon Kindle, the vibrant and extensive poetry market in Paris, a Czech book fair with an incredibly diverse setlist, and a poetry festival in São Paolo that thrills in originality. At the root of all these geographically disparate events is one common cause: that literature be accessible, inclusive, and for the greater good. 

Poupeh Missaghi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from New York City

Iranians have faced many ups and downs over the years in their access to international culture and information services, directly or indirectly as a result of sanctions; these have included limitations for publishers wanting to secure copyrights, membership services for journals or websites, access to phone applications, and even postal services for the delivery of goods, including books.

In a recent event, according to Radio Farda, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing stopped providing Persian/Farsi language services for direct publishing in November 2018. (You can find a list of supported languages here.) This affects many Iranian and Afghan writers and readers who have used the services as a means to publish and access literature free of censorship. Many speculate that this, while Arabic language services are still available, is due to Amazon wanting to avoid any legal penalties related to the latest rounds of severe sanctions imposed on Iran by the U.S.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

October 12, 2018  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Jacqueline Leung, Julia Sherwood, and Tiffany Tsao

In these dispatches, we see efforts in world literature to feature underrepresented voices.

World literature will be inclusive only through a continuous effort of organizing against the dominant, listening to the underrepresented, and making space for the unheard to bloom. This week our Editors-at-Large report such efforts from Australia, Hong Kong, and Slovakia. Read on to find out how the voices of women, indigenous and local peoples are being amplified around the world.

Tiffany Tsao, Editor-At-Large, reporting from Australia:

As part of an effort to resist the colonial systems that are the Australian publishing industry, the Australian media and arts industries, and modern Australia itself, the literary quarterly The Lifted Brow made the decision to hand over the entire production of their December issue to an all-First-Nations team of writers, editors, and ancillary staff. “We at TLB are too white, in all senses of that term,” read the magazine’s official statement on the matter. “[I]t’s way past the time that this should’ve changed. Our job and responsibility now is to push back against these oppressive and harmful regimes-within-regimes, not because we can undo the past, but because we can make better the present and the future.”

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