Three cards from Courtney Alexander’s tarot deck, the Three of Blades, Young Coin (the collage includes the eyes of Misty Copeland), and the Ace of Staffs. How do images shape us cultural…

Para on Lake Baikal in southern Siberia / Photo courtesy of the author Editorial note: “Siberian Romance,” a suite of Para’s poems, accompanies this introductory essay. Born in 1956…

Photo by Jennifer Boyer / Flickr Berlin poet, essayist, and playwright Esther Dischereit responds to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the shelling near Babyn Yar, the site of Nazi Germ…

“Literature was a vast minefield occupied by enemies,” Roberto Bolaño, who enjoyed accruing enemies in the pantheon of Latin American letters, writes in the short story “Meeting with Enrique Lihn” (…

Photo by Steve Evans / Flickr A longtime scholar, translator, and promoter of Ukrainian literature reflects on the existential crisis confronting Ukraine—and the West—today. In Pavl…

Photo by Miko Guziuk / Unsplash In his newest book, What Is American Literature? (Oxford University Press, 2022), award-winning cultural commentator, translator, and editor Ilan…

Photo by simpleinsomnia / Flickr If men and women reappraise the stories of masculinity they’ve received in texts by male authors, we all might better understand the stories we have.…

Gurnah received the Nobel Prize medal and diploma from the Swedish ambassador on December 6 © Nobel Prize Outreach / Photo by Hugh Fox Earlier this week, Abdulrazak Gurnah received t…

Photo by Eileen Pan / Unsplash “Instead of a totalizing interpretation,” writes the author, translators should seek a dialogical one. “We have to leave space,” he writes, “for a story, an…

Postcard for One City One Book Hong Kong 2020, which featured Xi Xi’s My City The Shanghai-born Hong Kong writer Xi Xi (b. 1937) was the 2019 winner of the Newman Prize…

Photo by Jason Kocheran / Unsplash A left-behind daughter of the Philippines reflects on her mother’s honorable sacrifice: leaving her family behind to support them while working abroad.…

Photo by Rodion Kutsaev / Unsplash When I met Emmanuel Carrère in 2014, I had one question for him. I was sent by the magazine I worked for at the time to interview him at a literary festival…

Sylvia Petter recalls Austrian writer Friederike Mayröcker, who passed away June 4, not long after the book-themed TV series ÜBER featured her in its first episode. Friederike May…

Photos by Mai Al-Nakib / Courtesy of the author Civilizations, empires, dynasties, and monarchies end, leaving behind ruins of their fabled splendor. Traces of achievements become more or les…

Poet and teacher K Za Win (1982–2021) / Photo courtesy of the author When I last visited Myanmar in 2013, it was to participate in the Irrawaddy Festival to launch Bones Will Crow: 15 Con…

Beirut; Credit: George Azar A writer reflects on her relationship to home in Beirut. Why the windows of the room did not shatter from the August 4 explosion is still a mystery. The…

Photo by Tyler Quiring / Unsplash Ismail Kadare has a remarkable quality of saying a great deal and with much clarity, but in an elusive, oblique, and allegorical way. Peter Constantine s…

Detail from Glück’s letter to the author / Courtesy of the author In a tribute to her teacher being named the 2020 laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a past prot…

To mark the upcoming 2020 Neustadt Lit Fest and the announcement of the 2021 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, here is an excerpt featuring the children’s and young…

Photo by Carlos Lechuga Translator’s note: On July 16, 2020, the Cuban government announced a set of economic reforms that includes the immediate rescission of the 10 percent surcharge on…

From the Family Album A writer born in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir reflects on how his older brother must have felt once the freedom to roam the apricot grove and streets of the…

Photo courtesy of the author Judging an English Olympiad in Kyrgyzstan, the author witnesses her native tongue “being sliced and slivered like a summer melon” while the…

Adapted from a photo by Jake weirick on Unsplash Like a dead pop star, Susan Sontag left behind a lot of fans who claim they knew her. After the release last September of Benja…