A conversation with Fiona Sze-Lorrain, whose novel in stories, Dear Chrysanthemums and her rendering of Zhang Zao's Mirror, though distinct, both question the simplistic ideas of what it means to be Asian in a global context and m
February 10, 2026
February 05, 2026
On Friday, February 20 from 3:00–4:30pm, WLT Editor in Chief Daniel Simon will give a thirty-minute talk about his new anthology, A Compass on the Navigable Sea: 100 Years of World Literature, published earlier this week by Restle
For a roundtable conversation devoted to Cherie Dimaline’s work that ended with the author gifting pieces of jewelry to the panelists, Kimberly Wieser-Weryackwe tied together themes of storytelling, Indigenous futurisms, and going home in Dimaline’s writing. The following is an adapted version of her talk.
The 2025 Neustadt Lit Fest, hosted by World Literature Today, took place on the University of Oklahoma (OU) campus October 20–22. Eight public events—featuring more than two dozen writers, dancers, musicians, and scholars—attracted more than a thousand attendees, including several hundred students from OU, the Norman Public Schools, and Colorado Academy.
“Her books matter because they tell stories that carry both warning and hope,” - Danny Ramadan
“away from the white-knuckle waves / wisps of fluorescence haunt the undergrowth / orange bands like blistering shoreline sores // life vests peeled off by the numb fingers of those / who staggered here before the light broke open,” from “life vests, samos,” by Kas Bernays
“[T]hus in silence he passes through / the quiet rooms of my childhood / (his cough in each doorway) / in a halo of outdated things and long-gone words / I no longer have a trace of his voice / only his cough returns as an echo,” from “Scraps of a Portrait,” by Sylvie Kandé (trans. Nancy Naomi Carlson)
“A “birthing experience,” he described, / at 82, riding the marble curve — its twist // tying a figure nine — after installing / at the Venice Biennale the stone slide, / one of his final works,” from “Slide Mantra,” by Brandon Som.
What Have You Been Reading?
“There are some books we meet in life that feel like falling in love; we think of them all the time.”
Underlining and Annotations
“Is reading really a waste of time? The thought fills me with dread.”
Each Leaf a Second
In a world dictated by mechanical rhythms, how can we rediscover our natural rhythms? What do literature and cinema, past or contemporary, teach us about human liberation from slavery to machines?
Rematriation, a concept advanced by Lee Maracle (1950–2021), among other Indigenous women, is “the process of restoring lands and cultures, done with deep reverence to honor not only the past and present but also the future, and rooted in Indigenous law” (IndigiNews). Here, the authors relate their own rematriation work in Oklahoma, Iraq, and beyond.
Music can reach parts of the soul that have never been touched, leading to new revelations. Here, a classical musician traces the influence of Radiohead and other bands on his own development and how music can be one path to a new place.
The news from Russia and Ukraine, places to which Yana Kane is linked by her own past and family roots, touches her deeply. For the past three years, she’s dedicated most of her creative energies to discovering and engaging with contemporary Russian-language poetry of witness and antiwar poetry that call to her as a translator.
“The Pain That Adjoined Me as a Twin Since Birth”: A Conversation with Kurdish Poet Hussein Habasch
A conversation with Hussein Habasch, a poet from Afrin, Kurdistan.
“Our Minds Are Porous and Forgetfulness Seeps In”: A Conversation on Translation and AI with Ilan Stavans
Ilan Stavans has tackled some of the most complex literary problems imaginable, ranging from piecing together the fragmentary work of poetry composed first in Nahuatl to teasing out the cultural bias in Spanish translations of that same work. With his skill in pattern recognition, recognizing bias, and evaluating multiple potential interpretations, Stavans is a perfect writer and scholar to chat with about the game-changing advent of AI.
“To Be Free You Need a Lot of Rules”: 5 Questions for Chiara Valerio
5 Questions for Chiara Valerio, author of The Little I Knew, which was a best-seller in Italy and published in English in 2025.
REVIEW WLT
Tell us what you think about the current issue or about the website by filling out our form.
Subscribe
