Alexander Tamahn, What Lies Beneath / Courtesy of the artist
This year—2021—marks the hundredth anniversary of the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Will it take another hun…
Essays
Since the economic reform launched in 1978, China has witnessed a vast group of rural women leaving their families behind in the countryside to enter urban middle-class homes as domestic workers.…
China’s “Battlers poetry” is written by members of the new precariat, especially rural-to-urban migrant workers. This is an exciting trend, both in its own right and when viewed as part of…
The entrance to Picun / Photo by Maghiel van Crevel Fu Qiuyun, also known as Xiaofu, is a young migrant worker from Henan, China, and also the organizer of the literature group in Picun (…
A meeting of the Picun Literature Group / Photo by Fu Qiuyun The Picun Literature Group has independently printed eight volumes of Picun literature since 2015 and…
Banner of the New Workers’ slogan in Picun / Photo by Hui Faye Xiao A group of Chinese migrant workers, who call themselves New Workers, have been uttering their voices through the medium…
Photo by Fallon Michael / Unsplash Using Bruce Charles Mollison’s How to Prepare for the Collapse of Capitalism as a starting point, Eric Schierloh partially rewrites and expands…
Photo © David Ethan Ellis In the following tribute, WLT’s executive director offers his homage to Rudolfo Anaya, both a legend of the Chicano Renaissance and a personal friend.…
Meytar Moran, The Crater, from the Black Magic series (2014–2015), MEYTARMORAN.COM Jewish literature, Israeli literature, Hebrew literature. From a distance they might seem like thre…
Ismail Kadare's birthplace of Gjirokastër, Albania. Photo by Bruno Malfondet / Flickr. Neustadt Prize winner Ismail Kadare transports a reader to the Albania of her grandparents…
The world English-language premiere of Ismail Kadare’s play Stormy Weather on Mount Olympus took place on October 21 during the 2020 Neustadt Lit Fest. Theater directo…
Photo by Aldo Bonata Reading Kadare, David Bellos finds the whole world in literary form: a masterful blend of myth and folklore with portraits of modern minds and local realities—plus a…
Adam Jones from Kelowna / Wikimedia Commons As part of the ceremony honoring Kadare as the 2020 laureate—with participants logging in from dozens of countries around the world—Kadare’s no…
J. M. W. Turner, Ancient Italy—Ovid Banished from Rome, oil on canvas, 1838 / Frick Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art During the Neustadt Prize ceremony on October 21, 2020, Dav…
Bobby Sands mural on gable wall of Sinn Fein offices on Falls Road, Belfast./ Photo by Shermozle / Wikimedia What is it about the revolutionary that draws our fascinated attention? Whethe…
Photo: José Arturo Ballester Panelli The state of emergency is the exception, the overturned routine, the searing pause, the lost tranquility. You might think that it is just a readjustment o…
Photo: Luis G. Collao When police are blinding protestors on Chile’s streets, eyes like poet Elvira Hernández’s become more important than ever. As I write this, Chile is burning. T…
Illustration: Jen Rickard Blair Scuba-diving in the Black Sea, a writer contemplates Lenin in the Crimean seabed, the watery landfall from which historical figures are never meant to rise…
photo: Cristian / Flickr A writer traces how the murder of George Floyd is continuing to arouse people in cities everywhere, including her own mother in Martinique. Sa ki…
Photo: Quarantine portrait. Tulsa, Oklahoma. March 22, 2020, by Joseph Rushmore A writer of historical fiction, located in the US heartland, considers the pandemic’s languid cree…
Sunset in Queens, New York, May 5, 2020. Photo: Jay Santiago / Flickr In isolation, a writer connects her mother’s attempt to protect her from “never-being-able-to-leave-Cuba-itis” to her…
The Greek government announced plans to reopen the vital tourism sector as the country is likely to suffer the worst recession in the European Union this year. Photo: Gianni Skaragas…
Honeycomb Photo: Shilo Labelle / Unsplash, bee photo: Ante Hamersmit / Unsplash, Spoon photo: Jen Blair In quarantine in South Beach, Miami, a writer looks to literature—and bees—wh…
An Iranian detainee hangs up her laundry on the fence at the Construction camp detention center used for younger men and women and children. February 26, 2012, on Christmas Island, Australia.…
Photo: Quinn Makabe played by Thapelo Mokoena in the TV drama of Trackers by Deon Meyer Encountering postapartheid Afrikaans fiction for the first time, particularly the fa…
