Translation awards, book infographics, and more
News, Reviews, and Interviews
Scholar and translator Burton Watson was named winner of the 2015 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation. Given every three years, it’s a prestigious lifetime achievement award for excellence.
Some Moscow bookstores are removing Art Spiegelman’s holocaust tale Maus in an attempt to comply with a law banning Nazi propaganda. Spiegelman worries this might help erase culture’s memories.
Last week, gunmen killed prominent Pakistani women’s rights activist Sabeen Mahmud. She lived in Karachi and had a café/bookstore she used as a gathering place for human rights activists and community leaders trying to improve life for Pakistanis. In this NPR interview, you can hear from her colleagues, who were mourning the loss last week at a literature festival in Islamabad.
Nearly 3 million students across the nation have competed in Poetry Out Loud since it started 10 years ago. It's the nation's largest youth poetry recitation competition and sponsored by National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. The finalists competed April 28-29, in Washington D.C., for $50,000 in awards.
If you’ve ever wondered what a special collections librarian does, this interview with Cristina Favretto, Head of Special Collections at the University of Miami, offers insight into the curating process.
The international BookWorld will be held at Prague’s Exhibition Grounds May 14-17 with a focus on Egyptian literature. The fair welcomes writers from 35 countries and will feature Egyptian writer and Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz.
The Millions compiled a list of nine books for the post-Ferguson era that shed light on the history and evolution of racism in the United States.
Fun Finds and Inspiration
The Laureate Lounge is a new space opening up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It’s a collaboration between the American Swedish Institute and Coffee House Press. Inspired by the real and imagined habits of Nobel Laureates, the space is intended to invite inspiration and fine-tune your creative process through dozens of short, thought-provoking, and fun assignments.
Book lovers will appreciate this list of literature and book-related infographics compiled by Buzzfeed.
Some authors have written about the future with eerily close predictions about inventions and events. This book list highlights Jules Verne, Jonathan Swift, and more.
