Colombian folk songs that influenced Gabriel García Márquez, a new literary prize, and more
News, Reviews, and Interviews
Deepak Unnikrishnan is the inaugural winner of the Restless Books New Immigrant Writing Prize.
Polish poet and Neustadt laureate Adam Zagajewski has won the 2016 Leopold Lucas Prize, one of Germany’s most prestigious awards for humanists.
Watch Angélica Freitas read her poem “Rilke Shake,” from the 2016 Best Translated Book Award-winning collection of the same title, translated from the Brazilian Portuguese by Hilary Kaplan and published by Phoneme Media.
Authors Agnes Heller, Elif Shafak, and Adam Zagajewski will join in a discussion over Europe’s changing environment for freedom on June 15 at the Free Word Centre in London.
The Armenian Mirror-Spectator discusses how Peter Balakian’s winning of the Pulitzer Prize in April has stirred worldwide Armenian pride. For more on Balakian, you can read this review of his most recent book, Vise and Shadow: Essays on the Lyric Imagination, Poetry, Art, and Culture.
Public Radio International shares the Colombian folks songs that influenced Gabriel García Márquez’s magical realism.
Next Wednesday, the Center for Fiction in New York City will host part four of its Business of Literary Translation series with co-presenters from the PEN America Translation Committee.
Louise Erdrich talks about the first book she fell in love with, what book she’s most looking forward to, and more.
Why are novellas so popular in China? Via Chinese Literature Today, Xu Zechen shares his views on novellas, contemporary Chinese literature, and his writing.
In this essay from The Millions, translator Alison Anderson discusses the public perception of what a literary translator does and the things lost—and found—in translation.
Fun Finds and Inspiration
New Republic examines the history of literary hate mail from the written letter to online commentary.
Cats and books join forces in this Chronicle Books list of 15 bookstore cats.
Via Buzzfeed Books, David L. Ulin shares how literature has become the shared vernacular between him and his father.
A new study from Nielsen Book shows that translated works of fiction sell better than original-language English books in the United Kingdom.
