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Interviews

September 2016

New Voices in Vietnamese American Literature: A Conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen, Andrew Lam, and Aimee Phan

By Aimee Phan

Viet Thanh Nguyen (photo by Bebe Jacobs), Andrew Lam, and Aimee Phan (photo by Julie Thi Underhill), respectively. Viet Thanh Nguyen became the first Vietnamese American writer to win the Pulitzer P...
September 2016

“Every Poet Has to Be Lonely”: A Conversation with Tomasz Różycki and His Translators

By Major Jackson, Mira Rosenthal

Tomasz Różycki Photo: Slav Zatoka Tomasz Różycki rose to both critical and popular prominence as an important voice of his generation in Poland when his fifth book, Twelve Stations, won the...
September 2016

Urban Reality and Classical Antiquity: A Conversation with Luis Alberto de Cuenca

By Diego Doncel

Luis Alberto de Cuenca (b. 1950, Madrid) is perhaps the one Spanish poet today who has influenced most of the younger generations of poets. He recently received the National Poetry Award for his late...
May 2016

Violence and Being Human: A Conversation with Han Kang

By Krys Lee

South Korean writer Han Kang photographed by Baik Dahum. Born in South Korea in 1970, Han Kang made her literary debut as a poet in 1993. She has since published novels and short fiction and won the...
May 2016

Prayer Flags and Kinship Rivers: A Conversation with Wang Ping

By Amy Lantrip

Wang Ping. Photo by Sara Rubinstein Wang Ping emigrated to the US from China in 1986 and is currently a professor of English at Macalester College. She is a writer, poet, translator, photographer, an...
May 2016

WLT’s 10 Sidebar Shorts with Han Kang

By WLT

Han Kang. Photo by Baik Dahum. What are you currently reading? Victor I. Stoichita’s A Short History of the Shadow What’s u...
May 2016

“You Write in the Breeze of Knowledge, Not in Light of It:” A Conversation with Hasan Ali Toptaş

By Hülya Yıldız

Hasan Ali Toptaş. Photo: buyukkeyif.com Hasan Ali Toptaş is one of the most exciting contemporary writers of Turkish literature. His short stories and novels have won prestigious national awards. His...
May 2016

“Building an Architecture for the Wanderer”: A Conversation with Nathalie Handal

By Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren

Nathalie Handal. Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Groundbreaking poet, playwright, and editor Nathalie Handal is one of our most diverse contemporary writers, and as the Washington Independent Re...
March 2016

“Catalog of an Impossible Library”: A Conversation with David B.

By Brian Evenson

Born in 1959, David B. (B. is short for Beauchard) began working in comics and illustration around 1985. In 1990, with a group of six other artists, he co-founded L’Association, the most influential p...
March 2016

From Catalan Poetry to Fortuny Gowns: A Conversation with Pere Gimferrer

By Adrian Nathan West

Photo: Mary Evans/Oscar Elias/Iberfoto Pere Gimferrer i Torrens is a poet, novelist, translator, and critic with some fifty books to his name. Despite countless awards and the praise of such writer...
January 2016

The Young Literary Scene in Kosovo: A Conversation with Ragip Luta

By Peter Constantine

Orllan. Photo by Ragi Pluta. Kosovo is a young and vibrant country striving to prevail in a harsh new Balkan reality. Ragip Luta is the director of Kosovo’s Festival of Literatu...
January 2016

An Exile from the Sea with the Desert in His Mouth: A Conversation with Iossif Ventura

By Adam J. Goldwyn

Photo by Jean-Marie Muggianu (Flickr.com/jmmuggianu) Born in Chania, Crete, in 1938, Iossif Ventura is a prominent Greek-Jewish poet and translator, a member of the Hellenic Authors’ Society, and the...
January 2016

Writing Yourself into the World: A Conversation with Valeria Luiselli

By Nichole L. Reber

Valeria Luiselli. Photo by Alfredo Pelcastre. It may have been fate that one of Mexico’s most magnificent recent literary exports led me to another one. Finding Sergio Pitol, whose first English tran...
November 2015

“If We Change the World We Also Change Its Meaning”: An Interview with Syrian Poet Adonis

By Erkut Tokman

Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Esber), born in Syria in 1930, is considered the most influential living Arab poet of our times. Due to his opposition to the political regime at the time, he fled to Beirut in...
September 2015

Phantoms as Ambassadors of Sense: A Conversation with Lorenza Ronzano

By Anne Greeott

Lorenza Rozano. Photo: AP Lorenza Ronzano lives in Alessandria, Italy, where she works as an existential therapist for the psychiatric ward of a hospital. Zolfo...
May 2015

The Sounds of Memory in Writing: A Conversation with Ronit Matalon

By Dinah Assouline Stillman

Ronit Matalon/Photo by Shay Ignatz Editorial note: An abbreviated version of the following essay appears in the May 2015 print edition of WLT. Who is Ronit Matalon? An Israeli ficti...
March 2015

An Interview with Iranian Poet Mohsen Emadi

By Persis Karim

Photo: AP Persis Karim: Can you say a little about what finally made you leave Iran? Were you threatened with imprisonment? I know you left in 2009, but in the inter...
January 2015

Translating Hassan Blasim: A Conversation with Jonathan Wright

By Lane Ashfeldt

Jonathan Wright. Photo by Tom Pilson The life of this interview began when Hassan Blasim and Jonathan Wright were announced as joint winners of the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The...
May-August 2014

Photographing Ecotourism and Breakaway Republics: An Interview with Kevin Gass

By Kevin Gass, Merleyn Bell

The gallery above includes photos of Potosi and Cerro Rico Mine, Bolivia. Photos © Kevin Gass Photojournalist Kevin Gass has been creating photo essays that capture countries and cultures in flux...
March 2014

Emerging from the Shadows of History: A Conversation with Maaza Mengiste

By Z’étoile Imma

Photo by Simon Hurst In 2010 Ethiopian American writer Maaza Mengiste’s literary debut, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze,...
March 2014

Raquel Castro Asks Herself, “Is It True There Is No Humor in Mexican Literature?”

By Raquel Castro

Photo by hjhipster/Flickr I asked myself these questions in a field outside an apartment community in Dallas, Texas. It was cold. The people walking by looked at me strangely ei...
March 2014

Translating Humor: Three Questions for Elizabeth Novickas

By WLT, Elizabeth Novickas

Q: Translating humor across cultures is particularly challenging. What difficulties did you confront while translating these essays and how did you resolve them? A: L...
March 2014

David Sedaris on His Humor in Translation

By WLT, David Sedaris

WLT: Translating humor across cultures is particularly challenging. What has surprised you most about how your translators have re-created your work in other languages?...
September 2013

Three Questions for Abdellah Taïa

By Daniel Simon

Daniel Simon The themes of “Turning Thirty” have an archetypal feel to them—sickness, death, rebirth, forbidden love, truth, happiness, naming, freedom, madness, fear, solitude. Do y...
May 2013

Rebel with a Cause in Serbia: A Conversation with Zvonko Karanović

By Biljana D. Obradović

Zvonko Karanović Like the poets of the Beat generation from whom he takes inspiration, poet and fiction writer Zvonko Karanović (b. 1959, Niš, Serbia) has traveled widely throughout...

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