Irene Marques reviews Olinda Beja’s story collection “The Shepherd’s House,” published in 2025 by Arquipélago Press.
January 06, 2026
December 19, 2025
In her essay "The Borders We Cross," Anna Badkhen asks, What if writers imagined a different map of the world?
December 17, 2025
December 15, 2025
October 21, 2025
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.
The 2025 NSK Prize ceremony featured a video greeting from OU President Joseph Harroz Jr., a powwow exhibition dance, and the formal prize presentation by the Neustadt sisters. After receiving the award, Dimaline received a standing ovation, then delivered the following acceptance remarks.
“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
“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.
“When an ancient-rock splits open — / trees and skies starkly mirror / the tectonic drama on the stone’s gaping / weathered face,” from “Split Fossil,” by Sudeep Sen
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?
Stroma
In this story of transhumanism, a woman reflects on how her childhood matryoshka dolls became an organizing principle for the neuroprosthetic systems she helped bring into existence.
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.
A writer and musician from Gdańsk, Poland, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski collaborated on Franz with Agnieszka Holland, a filmmaker who in the dark times of the Communist regime left Poland for Prague out of love for Kafka. Kwiatkowski considers the film’s universal relevance as democracy is attacked and finds a film ultimately as enigmatic as Kafka himself.
Now a writer and university professor, Iheoma Nwachukwu played professional chess in Nigeria for ten years. Here he considers what chess’s more rigorous contact with AI can teach professors grappling with the spark between students and AI.
“Look for What Feels Singular”: 5 Questions for Thomas Schlesser
An mini-interview with Thomas Schlesser, whose book Mona's Eyes, follows a ten-year-old girl whose grandfather begins taking her on outings to museums in Paris when she begins to experience temporary loss of sight.
“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.
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