When reflecting on the experience of interviewing his own grandfather into his one hundredth year, Matt A. Hanson finds a kindred methodology in writer Michael Frank’s patience as he interviewed Holoc…
Essays
Sona Jobarteh, the first woman to achieve an international profile playing the kora, is a singular figure in the pantheon of twenty-first-century African artists. Read Banning Eyre’s profile of her h…
Photo courtesy of authorA refugee from the Bosnian War, Lana Spendl recalls family weekends in the country outside of Sarajevo: her friend with one cow, her grandmother’s garden, butterflies, and her…
Photos by Yousef Khanfar | www.yousefkhanfar.comThe tears, the rituals: a family goes on a journey and joins millions of strangers pouring into Mecca. In this moving essay, a writer evokes the beauty,…
Photo BY 1983 (steal my _ _ art) on UnsplashTo accompany the poems that appear by the five Indigenous writers in this issue, Wendy Call talked with them to discuss their emancipatory linguistic activi…
Ian Kuali’i, Portrait Queen Lili‘uokalani (2021), hand-cut paper with painted verso, 72 X 48 in.The following essay was originally delivered as a talk for a virtual poetry workshop for the De…
Puracé Volcano in the Colombian Massif / Courtesy of WikipediaQuechua writer and Yanakuna poet Fredy Chikangana explores how the Yanakuna language “contributes seeds to the construction of a world…
William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode: 2. The Tête à Tête (1743)After a decade of talking to strangers while traveling, J. R. Patterson explores why strangers make some of the best conversation…
For the past few years I’ve been living in Lahore. Like they have for many, the brave women-led Iranian protests have made me reflect on the rights of women and the price we pay for freedom and justic…
When Irina Flige visited the University of Oklahoma to receive the 2022 Clyde Snow Social Justice Award earlier this year, she delivered the following public lecture, based on her work with the Russia…
In the mid-1960s Lam’s mother ran an orphanage in Sadec in the Mekong Delta, when his father was stationed there.Remembering his mother, who loved and protected without wavering, writer Andrew Lam als…
Alex Castro Ferreira, Be Proud, artist book / Courtesy of the artist / www.alexcastroferreira.com Where have books been? Where are they going? In this tour d’horizon, Alice-Catherine Carls f…
Francis Meslet, Forgotten Libraries series (2023) / francismeslet.comTranslator’s note: Almost thirty-five years have passed since the democratic awakening of central Europe, yet despite being praised…
Artwork and photos by Kailee Bosch and Laurent NiclotWith the introduction of new platforms for reading and engaging with the printed word in recent decades, book lovers might be forced to wonder: Is…
David Bradley, PhD (b. 1954, White Earth Ojibwe), Treaty Dollar (ca. 1998)/ Courtesy of the artistNative dream songs are forever in the clouds, and once more the empire wars are underway…
“Books,” writes Robert Bringhurst, “are things that humans make, or try to make, as persistently as birds make nests, and we do it for similar reasons.” In the following essay, the author mulls the fu…
Guadalupe Nettel, Samanta Schweblin, Mónica Ojeda, and other Latin American women writers are responding to themes that particularly speak to a younger, female audience—bodily autonomy, redefiniti…
Citizen-activist Evgenia Isayeva doused herself with red paint as part of the “Heart Bleeds” action near the Duma Tower, St. Petersburg, Russia, March 27, 2022. Her banner reads: “My heart bleeds. /…
Bridget Pitt, author of the novel Eye Brother Horn, reflects on how South Africa’s colonial history, and the entanglement of nature conservation with social inequality and violence, mean…
Photo by Gavyn Redd / Shevaun Williams Photography This essay is a stroll through the oeuvre of the 2022 Neustadt Prize winner, Boubacar Boris Diop. It offers a foray into his formative years, fo…
Still from Sembène’s Borom Sarret (Cart Driver) (1963) | Courtesy of IMDB.com Boubacar Boris Diop’s novel Doomi Golo is a rich puzzle of personal and historical narratives on th…
Photo by Gavyn Redd Diop delivered the following keynote talk to a packed audience at the University of Oklahoma during the 2022 Neustadt Lit Fest (October 24–26, 2022), which was also livestream…
Festival Presenters Anna Badkhen and Marame Gueye / Photo by Gavyn Redd FOR THE FIRST time since the start of the pandemic, World Literature Today resumed hosting the 2022 N…
Photo by Gavyn Redd Jennifer Croft, who nominated Diop for the 2022 Neustadt Prize, delivered the following encomium at the ceremony during which he received the award at the University of Oklaho…
The Democracy Monument in Bangkok / Wikipedia Chiranan Pitpreecha’s poetry gave voice to Thailand’s mass pro-democracy movement of the early 1970s. After a violent government crackdown in 1976, s…
