In this interview focused on devotional Indian poetry (bhakti), Arundhathi Subramaniam (b. 1967) discusses her interest and involvement in this genre as editor and translator, the impact and…

In June 2024 Pantheon published Tehrangeles, Porochista Khakpour’s latest novel (see WLT, Sept. 2024, 73). The novel satirizes social media culture and turns the lives of four Irania…

Roger Allen was the first person to obtain a doctorate in modern Arabic literature at the University of Oxford. After obtaining his DPhil, he joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania till…

Bearing Witness: In his ongoing column, Karlos K. Hill highlights the efforts of cultural figures doing works of essential good around issues of social justice. Tens of thousands of Americans…

In September, the University of Georgia Press published Japa and Other Stories, Iheoma Nwachukwu’s debut collection of short fiction. In these eight stories, Nigerian immigrants trek through…

Photo by Laurent BadessiThe last time I saw Giannina Braschi was a year ago at the 92NY in New York City. The auditorium was packed—800-plus New Yorkers convening to celebrate the launch of my monumen…

James Baldwin, whose hundredth birthday we recently celebrated, once declared that besides bearing witness to America’s perennial and intolerable abuse of its Black and colored citizens, his vision as…

  Photo courtesy of the author / ThreaWrites.comThe Wild Fox of Yemen, by Threa Almontaser, received the Academy of American Poets’ Walt Whitman Award for best first book in 2020, nearly a ye…

Itoro Bassey (left) and Esinam BediakoEsinam Bediako, a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit, and Itoro Bassey, a Nigerian American writer born in Houston and raised in New England, are both debut, s…

I first came across Cara Lopez Lee on a listserv group (remember those!) for authors who write about Asia. Cara’s memoir, They Only Eat Their Husbands: Love, Travel, and the Power of Running Away…

Lyn Coffin / Photo by Irmaguru / WikimediaDescribed by Iron Twine Press as “the most accomplished writer most Americans have never heard of,” Lyn Coffin (b. 1943) is a prolific contemporary US poet,…

Maureen Freely (left) & Funda Soysal (right)Maureen Freely is an author, translator, and professor of English and comparative literary studies at the University of Warwick. Among her many tran…

  Right photo by formulanone / FlickrT. R. Hummer, as he is known professionally but Terry to his wide group of friends, has enjoyed a remarkably multifaceted literary career over the course of the pa…

Zhang Ling is the author of ten novels, including A Single Swallow (trans. Shelly Bryant) and Where Waters Meet, the first two novels in her Children of War trilogy. Focusing on…

On March 26, 2024, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop co-sponsored an event at Yu and Me Books to celebrate the New York City launch of Parul Kapur’s debut novel, Inside the Mirror (Univers…

Charlotte Collins (left) and Ruth Martin (photo courtesy of Michael Jershov)With the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona’s project “The Novel as Global Form: Poetic Challenges and Cross-Border L…

Carolina Orloff is a translator, author, and researcher of Latin American literature. In 2016, after obtaining her PhD from the University of Edinburgh, she set up Charco Press, where she serves as ed…

Leonora Djament has been editorial director of the Argentine publishing house Eterna Cadencia Editora since 2007. She holds a degree in literature from the University of Buenos Aires and is the author…

Vonani Bila with his mother and his son. Courtesy of Mark Waller, 2010.Vonani Bila (b. 1972) grew up in Shirley Village, Limpopo province, South Africa, from where he used to walk fourteen kilometers…

Photo of Stephanie Pacheco courtesy of The Village TripOn April 20, 2024, Stephanie Pacheco was named the 2024 National Youth Poet Laureate, the eighth person to hold that title. A fierce advocate for…

An epic family saga that spans over one hundred years and two countries, Wendy Chen’s powerful, lyrical debut, Their Divine Fires (Algonquin, forthcoming on May 7, 2024), is about history…

Photo © Lee HaesooOn March 20, Restless Books published Kim Hye-jin’s Counsel Culture, a novel about a woman’s scapegoating and her path to redemption, translated by Jamie Chang. Haesoo…

Ethel Rohan’s second novel, Sing, I, was published by TriQuarterly Books on April 15. The novel’s heroine, Ester Prynn, works in a convenience store in a coastal California town. A masked…

Rigoberto González / Photo by Mahsa HojjatiRecently, I scheduled a zoom call with my friends Bright Ikenna Uwandu and Anthony Chibueze Ukwuoma with the cryptic agenda of “catching up.” The meeting was…

Katie Gee Salisbury first came across Anna May Wong when she was doing a college internship and found an old black-and-white photo of the starlet from almost a century earlier. This image would fo…