World Literature Today’s editors announce their 2025 year-end picks for the Pushcart Prize LI anthology and Best Literary Translations 2027.
December 16, 2025
Light and Melody, published in Korea in 2024, combines The Diary of Anne Frank’s intimacy of the everyday amid violence with Winter in Sokcho’s dislocated protagonist yearning for identity in foreign countries.
December 17, 2025
December 15, 2025
October 21, 2025
“We are not in the era of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, robots (or reboots), WhatsApps, Zooms, Facebooks, or anything of the kind. We are in the age of utter sloth.”
Do we want to live in a society in which humans are increasingly pushed aside, de-skilled, and demoralized? The author looks at literary translation as a test case to find out.
“If we reassign our role as language creators to AI, we will lose what makes us human.”
“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
“In all directions—our sky is blocked. / Muttering “screw it,” shrugging “who gives a damn?” / The nation’s once again / Spineless and stuck,” from “Laws Are Mutating . . .” by Vanechka (trans. Yana Kane, edited by Bruce Esrig)
“At forty we have two kids running, / shouting, crying / that the sand is too hot, / that we argued / that nothing here brings joy,” from “Future Plans,” by Rosa Berbel (trans. Jane Stringham)
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.
Remembering Technology
This short fiction is from the collection The Woman Dies (Europa, 2025), Aoko Matsuda’s feminist tales from Japan that blend humor, surrealism, and sharp social critique.
Just Now
A South African writer born after the Group Areas Act returns to Simon’s Town with her mother, who used to visit the old fishing town before it was declared white.
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.
A frequent WLT contributor faces a quandary likely faced by book reviewers, and avid readers, everywhere: which books to take with them when moving house?
The owner of a small, independent press considers the role of book reviews in getting books into readers’ hands.
“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.
“Where the Reader Can Be Warned”: 7 Questions for George Gömöri
An interview with George Gömöri, a reviewer who has contributed to WLT for more than sixty years.
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