Essays
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Photo by Fallon Michael / Unsplash Using Bruce Charles Mollison’s How to Prepare for the Collapse of Capitalism as a starting point, Eric Schierloh partially rewrites and expands... -
Photo © David Ethan Ellis In the following tribute, WLT’s executive director offers his homage to Rudolfo Anaya, both a legend of the Chicano Renaissance and a personal friend.... -
Meytar Moran, The Crater, from the Black Magic series (2014–2015), MEYTARMORAN.COM Jewish literature, Israeli literature, Hebrew literature. From a distance they might seem like three... -
Ismail Kadare's birthplace of Gjirokastër, Albania. Photo by Bruno Malfondet / Flickr. Neustadt Prize winner Ismail Kadare transports a reader to the Albania of her grandparents’ generatio... -
The world English-language premiere of Ismail Kadare’s play Stormy Weather on Mount Olympus took place on October 21 during the 2020 Neustadt Lit Fest. Theater director... -
Photo by Aldo Bonata Reading Kadare, David Bellos finds the whole world in literary form: a masterful blend of myth and folklore with portraits of modern minds and local realities—plus a c... -
Adam Jones from Kelowna / Wikimedia Commons As part of the ceremony honoring Kadare as the 2020 laureate—with participants logging in from dozens of countries around the world—Kadare’s nom... -
J. M. W. Turner, Ancient Italy—Ovid Banished from Rome, oil on canvas, 1838 / Frick Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art During the Neustadt Prize ceremony on October 21, 2020, David Bel... -
Bobby Sands mural on gable wall of Sinn Fein offices on Falls Road, Belfast./ Photo by Shermozle / Wikimedia What is it about the revolutionary that draws our fascinated attention? Whether... -
Photo: José Arturo Ballester Panelli The state of emergency is the exception, the overturned routine, the searing pause, the lost tranquility. You might think that it is just a readjustment of... -
Photo: Luis G. Collao When police are blinding protestors on Chile’s streets, eyes like poet Elvira Hernández’s become more important than ever. As I write this, Chile is burning. The... -
Illustration: Jen Rickard Blair Scuba-diving in the Black Sea, a writer contemplates Lenin in the Crimean seabed, the watery landfall from which historical figures are never meant to rise... -
photo: Cristian / Flickr A writer traces how the murder of George Floyd is continuing to arouse people in cities everywhere, including her own mother in Martinique. Sa ki ta la r... -
Photo: Quarantine portrait. Tulsa, Oklahoma. March 22, 2020, by Joseph Rushmore A writer of historical fiction, located in the US heartland, considers the pandemic’s languid creep... -
Sunset in Queens, New York, May 5, 2020. Photo: Jay Santiago / Flickr In isolation, a writer connects her mother’s attempt to protect her from “never-being-able-to-leave-Cuba-itis” to her... -
The Greek government announced plans to reopen the vital tourism sector as the country is likely to suffer the worst recession in the European Union this year. Photo: Gianni Skaragas In Gr... -
Honeycomb Photo: Shilo Labelle / Unsplash, bee photo: Ante Hamersmit / Unsplash, Spoon photo: Jen Blair In quarantine in South Beach, Miami, a writer looks to literature—and bees—while co... -
An Iranian detainee hangs up her laundry on the fence at the Construction camp detention center used for younger men and women and children. February 26, 2012, on Christmas Island, Australia. Pho... -
Photo: Quinn Makabe played by Thapelo Mokoena in the TV drama of Trackers by Deon Meyer Encountering postapartheid Afrikaans fiction for the first time, particularly the fast-pac... -
Photo: Rene Böhmer / Unsplash A polyhedron of blond leather. Thirty-two by seventeen by twelve. Solid handle, brass hooks, wide belt, reinforced external corners, hand-sewn. Inside, top, a str... -
Left to right: Ayobami Adebayo, Chigozie Obioma, and Romeo Oriogun Three millennial writers probe inner male conflict while the patriarch Achebe looks on. A man lays his head... -
Relief at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Photo: Clare_and_ben / flickr Standing before a museum exhibit of a mummified five-year-old “Purchased in Egypt in 1895,” a f... -
After watching the world-premiere dance adaptations of her poems from The Surrender Tree, Engle delivered the following keynote to the packed audience in attendance, which included sever... -
Photo: Shevaun Williams Lilliam Rivera served on the jury that chose the 2019 NSK Prize winner and successfully championed Margarita Engle as her nominee. On the first day of the 2019 Neus... -
A monument to poet Adam Mickiewicz. Photo: Jutta M. Jenning / Flickr A couple finds their hired tour guide more sage for hire—like Socrates, an ambulatory pedagogue. I saw him first f...
