Essays

Weaving a Creole Patrimony

By Patrick Chamoiseau

Winter 2019
Patrick Chamoiseau

Camp de la Transportation in French Guiana. Photo: Rodolphe Hammadi In this excerpt from French Guiana: Memory-Traces of the Penal Colony, Chamoiseau explores the possibilities of rewr...
You’ll Never Leave: Seeking Salvation on the Shores of Morocco

By André Naffis-Sahely

Winter 2019
André Naffis-Sahely

Photo: Maged/Flickr Throughout its 2,500-year history, irrespective of whether it was a Carthaginian colony, a Roman provincial capital, a Portuguese colony, an English naval outpost, or a Moro...
An Anatomy of Lostness

By Anna Badkhen

November 2018
Anna Badkhen

Releasing the Truth, mixed media on canvas by Florine Démosthène. Courtesy of the artist. What is this sense of dislocation? Do others have it? A wandering writer explores displacement o...
On Fire: Five Meditations on Opera

By Kevin Simmonds

November 2018
Kevin Simmonds

A scene from the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Satyagraha. Photo: Ken Howard/Courtesy of LA Opera During a 1969 trip to India, composer Philip Glass was compelled to learn...
Playtime in Vienna: The Austrian Literary Scene Finds Its Sense of Humor

By Mandakini Pachauri, Keija Parssinen

November 2018
Mandakini Pachauri, Keija Parssinen

The O-Töne literary festival brings hundreds of people to the central square of MuseumsQuartier. Photo courtesy of O-Töne. At the new Literaturmuseum, nestled in a historic building on Johannesgasse...
Mashrou’

By Janice Weizman

September 2018
Janice Weizman

Photo: Matan Eldar Israel and Lebanon, Hebrew and Arabic—so close, yet so far away. I'm driving down the coastal road, flashes of bright blue sea, glimmering gold and silver in...
Poems as Lyrics: Poemas musicalizados in Uruguay

By Jesse Lee Kercheval

September 2018
Jesse Lee Kercheval

Tatiana Oroño and the musician Daniel Petruchelli, who set her poem “Elogio del camino” to music, taken at a performance at the Casa de los escritores (House of Writers) in Montevideo / Photos by Mar...
Amelia Curran: “I Am the Song”

By Andrew DuBois

September 2018
Andrew DuBois

Photo: Amelia Curran. © Six Shooter Records Is Canadian singer-songwriter Amelia Curran a mix of Leonard Cohen and Patsy Cline? A juggler of Robert Frost’s poems? Andrew DuBois considers her art...
The Rehearsal: Poetry-Jazz in Addis Ababa

By Eric Ellingsen

September 2018
Eric Ellingsen

Inside the Fendika Cultural Center that houses the artists’ rehearsal space. All Photos (except where noted): Eric Ellingsen “Poetry is not a form, but rather a result.” –Amiri Baraka In front...
In the Den of the Voice

By Philip Metres

September 2018
Philip Metres

An overgrown yard at a factory where statues of Lenin and other Soviet leaders used to be made. Photo: Philip Metres In the Den of the Voice” is part of The More You Love the Motherland...
Slaying New Black Notions: Childish Gambino’s “This Is America”

By Ladan Osman

July 2018
Ladan Osman

Photo: A still from “This is America” by Childish Gambino Poet Ladan Osman considers how Childish Gambino obliterates rooted acts of black optimism and expression, leading us to underst...
Blind Spots: The 2018 Puterbaugh Keynote

By Jenny Erpenbeck

July 2018
Jenny Erpenbeck

Photo: Shevaun Williams & Associates After watching the dance adaptation of her story “Sand” at the 2018 Puterbaugh Festival, Erpenbeck delivered the following keynote, in which she...
Celebrating 50 Years of the Puterbaugh Festival

By WLT

July 2018
WLT

This year’s fiftieth-anniversary Puterbaugh Festival of International Literature & Culture set a new high-water mark in the cultural life of the University of Oklahoma, in a series already distin...
The Enduring Impermanence of Jenny Erpenbeck

By Necia Chronister

July 2018
Necia Chronister

The Eclipse, by Viktor Ash. This wall painting at Urban Spree Berlin was part of a pop-up exhibition to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of Ash’s Astronaut /Cosmonaut...
Lin Shu, Author of the Quixote

By Mikaël Gómez Guthart

July 2018
Mikaël Gómez Guthart

A monument to Don Quixote in Tandil, Argentina. Photo: Carlos Barengo/Pixabay China is so peculiarly revealing in its essence that few authors can approach it without unveiling their inn...
Yu Xiuhua: A Life Lived in Poetry

By Dian Li

July 2018
Dian Li

Still from Still Tomorrow (2016), dir. Jian Fan, produced by Youku Tudou, Inc. She is a subsistence farmer with a ninth-grade education and a disabled person with speec...
In Memoriam Claribel Alegría: Amor sin fin

By George Evans, Daisy Zamora

May 2018
George Evans, Daisy Zamora

left Claribel Alegría, 1953. right Flakoll-Alegría family, 1959. Left to right: Patricia, Erik, Claribel, Karen, Maya, Bud. Photos used by permission of Er...
The Power of Normal: Exploring the Notion of Story Structure

By Nii Ayikwei Parkes

May 2018
Nii Ayikwei Parkes

photo: three-shots/pixabay As readers, we all carry prejudices, but acknowledging a wider range of normals makes the difference between “I don’t understand your normal” and “I refuse to...
The Special Case of Jamaican Patois

By Erik Gleibermann

May 2018
Erik Gleibermann

Editorial note: This sidebar appears with Erik Gleibermann’s essay “Inside the Bilingual Writer” in the same issue M arlon James’s use of Jamaican Patois in his 2015 Booker Prize–winning nove...
Inside the Bilingual Writer

By Erik Gleibermann

May 2018
Erik Gleibermann

Daniel Alarcón, Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisneros, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Díaz, Ha Jin, Esmeralda Santiago, and Gary Shteyngart. Illustration by Jen Rickard Blair Through a series of interviews, E...
Fractured but Whole, Separated but Together

By Joseph O. Legaspi

March 2018
Joseph O. Legaspi

Bonifacio Global City, Manila, 2015. photo: jason reblando In 2015, while on a Fulbright research fellowship in the Philippines, I went on a walking tour of Intramuros, the famed walled city in Mani...
Conversations at the Edge of Carnage

By Laurel Flores Fantauzzo

March 2018
Laurel Flores Fantauzzo

The missing persons bulletin board at Navotas City Police Station in Metro Manila, June 2017. Photo courtesy of the author Do so many opportunities to bear witness only create opportuniti...
Bowled Over – A Life with Poems: The 2017 NSK Prize Keynote

By Marilyn Nelson

March 2018
Marilyn Nelson

photos: shevaun williams & associates After being visibly moved by dance adaptations of four of her poems, Dr. Nelson delivered the following keynote to the packed audience in attendance, wh...
Reinventing and Reimagining the World: A Tribute to Marilyn Nelson

By Hayan Charara

March 2018
Hayan Charara

A statue of a young Carver at the George Washington Carver National Monument. photo: jinx!/flickr Hayan Charara, a poet, editor, essayist, and children’s book author, nominated Marilyn Nelson for...
Migration, My Mother, and Me

By Sabina Murray

March 2018
Sabina Murray

The Seer, by Maia Cruz Palileo A writer undergoes a transformation while overcoming a series of obstacles as she works to reunite her mother with her mother’s siblings in the Philippine...