Shapereader, by Ilan Manouach (shapereader.org)
To say that Ilan Manouach is the most recognized avant-garde comics artist in Greece may be faint praise. The country’s independent comics sce…
Essays
From L’Ascension du Haut Mal, by David B. (L’Association, 1996–2003) I’m so pleased to guest-edit this comics-themed issue for World Literature Today for many reasons. Personally—an…
Ghassan Zaqtan (left) and Mahmoud Darwish in a 2007 photo taken by Palestinian poet Bashir Shalash. After presenting a sweeping landscape of Arabic poetry since pre-Islamic days…
One of several sculptures in Azerbaijan honoringnineteenth-century poet Khurshidbanu Natavan,Nizami Museum of Literature. Photo: Alison Mandaville In the center of one square in the capital of Baku,…
The traditional Ghanian kente cloth that Meshack Asare wore to the 2015 Neustadt Festival ceremony. When Asare accepted the NSK Prize last October, he wore a traditional Ghanaian kente cloth for…
Meshack Asare speaking at the 2015 Neustadt Festival banquet. Speaking before a packed audience at the University of Oklahoma last October, Asare reflected on culture as our “mandate to…
Meshack Asare. Photo by Shevaun Williams I feel greatly honored in that such a prestigious award, bestowed by a truly distinguished American institution, is an immense recognition of my role in Afric…
Meshack Asare, Kathy Neustadt, Josh Hankin, Tess Hankin, and Nii Ayikwei Parkes. Photo by Merleyn Bell. Parkes read the following tribute at the banquet honoring Meshack Asare as the 201…
A Bangladeshi writer traces his quest to dodge the external and internal censors and considers what fiction at its best can do: “sail past all censors to uncover the tender and transgres…
Members of the Sheffield, UK–based performance company Forced Entertainment on stage in And on the Thousandth Night at the Hebbel am Ufer performance center in Berlin. Photo: Hugo Glendi…
Syrian artist Issam Kourbaj created Unearthed (in Memoriam) (2014) out of repurposed book covers. He calls the work “a quiet gesture, an archive to remember those who have been forg…
Photo by Raul Lieberwirth The great games will be remembered for a lifetime, just as we cannot give up on our failures, either. The muscles record the beautiful strokes; the pos…
In the following essay, the authors look at poets and visual artists who use language in ways that blur the line between disciplines, with a particular emphasis on the environment. What happe…
The Voyager Space Probe passing Jupiter. Image generated with Celestia; 3D model by ElChristou Beginning with the Voyager space launch and moving through explorations…
Alene Puterbaugh. Painting by Ed Kelley. In March 1972, in response to a letter from University of Oklahoma president Paul F. Sharp addressed to her late husband, Alene Puterbaugh wrote: “I wish to a…
After meeting at a short-fiction conference, Adnan Mahmutović and Lucy Durneen began talking to one another about his childhood love of comics and his efforts to preserve them during the Bosnian…
ILLUSTRATION Noa Vichansky, The Spring Is So Short Here, date unknown, silkscreen. Courtesy of the artist. For a biographical note about Vichansky, see the end of the articl…
The following excerpt is from The Last Soldiers of the Cold War, by Fernando Morais, forthcoming Verso Books (on sale wherever books are sold on June 16, 2015). Roberto Fernández Retamar…
Photo by Yuri Numerov Writers from those parts of the world where democracy has for too long remained an unfulfilled dream cannot be apolitical. Over the years, as media freedom…
Photo by Neil Craver Andrés Felipe Solano tackles fiction in his novels and facts in his journalism—as a writer, he alternates between the real and the imaginary. Of course, tha…
Going to strange places only counts if you go to strange places in yourself. Actually hearing the environment anywhere means you are hearing the Arriver within. Everything is local once you arrive…
Photo by Francis Bijl/Flickr World culture today is developing amid expanding globalization, which means that national literatures appear to develop more and more similar featur…
Serhiy Zhadan and Lyubko Deresh This past summer, two Ukrainian writers celebrated milestone birthdays, a decade after the Orange Revolution and amid new upheavals.…
The Berlin Wall. Photo by Rane Ahbijeet Fan club activities can be essential to the promotion of domestic science fiction in a foreign country. The science-fiction fan clubs of Berlin share a uni…
Photo by Susan Sermoneta/Flickr The Swiss poet Kuno Raeber (1922–92) characterized his encounters with the cities Rome and New York as the “great erotic shocks” of his life. Rome qu…
