Essays

The Role of Intuition in Translation

By Carles Andreu

Spring 2019
Carles Andreu

PHOTO: Jen Rickard Blair After translating more than two hundred titles into Spanish and Catalan, Carles Andreu focuses on his translations of Jennifer Egan’s work to consider the role of...
Reading Multilingual Arab Literatures Globally in the Twenty-First Century

By Syrine Hout

Spring 2019
Syrine Hout

Spiegel by Jaume Plensa at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom. PHOTO: puffin11k/Flickr Can contemporary reading methods catch up with the proliferation of and innovation...
Love and Sexuality in the Fallen World of Ma Jian

By Elizabeth Fifer

Spring 2019
Elizabeth Fifer

PHOTO: Alexandru Acea/Unsplash Reviewing Ma Jian’s three-decades-long career, Elizabeth Fifer traces the banned and exiled Chinese writer’s deepening critique. A newly translated work...
“All Geography Is Within Me”: Writing Beginnings, Life, Death, Freedom, and Salt

By Edwidge Danticat

Winter 2019
Edwidge Danticat

Following the performances of two Haitian-inspired dances at the 2018 festival, Danticat delivered the following keynote to the audience of several hundred in attendance. 1 This past June I w...
“Stretching the Limits of Silence”: Witness and Resistance in Edwidge Danticat’s Nonfiction

By Renee H. Shea

Winter 2019
Renee H. Shea

Photo: Parth Upadhyay/Unsplash Reflecting back over Edwidge Danticat’s nonfiction, Renee H. Shea finds much to be grateful for in Danticat’s extension of her personal stories into political and...
Met Fanm Sou Ou

By Marie Casimir

Winter 2019
Marie Casimir

OU School of Dance students performing Women Like Us at the 2018 Neustadt Lit Fest / Photo by Nancy Barcelo In her latest collection of essays, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Stor...
Bearing the Unforgivable: A Tribute to Edwidge Danticat

By Achy Obejas

Winter 2019
Achy Obejas

Photo: Shevaun Williams Thank you to the Neustadt Prize committee, Neustadt sisters and family, the University of Oklahoma, the incredible writers who served with me on the jury last year. It is my...
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...