“This article began with a zombie. Had it not been for the zombie, I wouldn’t have opened the way I did, nor said what I am about to say, nor compared what I am about to compare. I would have written…
In Every Issue
Photos by Laura HernandezNestled on a quiet street in the Cordón neighborhood of Montevideo, Uruguay, is Escaramuza, a combination bookstore, café, and cultural events center. With ornate tile floors,…
As a tween, I was solely allowed to read whatever was “true”; stories found in nonfiction historical narratives, biographies, zoography, and travelogues. While the emotional truths one finds in fictio…
Photo by Jacob Boomsma / istockphoto.comIn the Toronto airport, a young woman moved her bag from a seat so that someone might sit down. “You can sit here, eh. I’m from Brandon, in ‘Friendly Manitoba,’…
Photo of Kim Yuna, courtesy of UPI / Alamy Stock Photo / Molly Riley Is this idea of mass frustration distinctly Korean, or is it more international in scope? In her ongoing column on untranslatable…
Photo of the Wales Millennium Centre / Jonny Gios / Unsplash.comHear the seagulls? They carouse all over the city, cawing about the places they’ve been beyond Wales. That’s always the way of it in Car…
“Between the political mentality and the pure intellect there are inevitable differences. The political mind seeks to dominate the relative or the accidental, as the navigator, expert in winds and the…
Photo courtesy of the Cheikh BookstoreThere are very few historical bookstores to be found in Algeria, and one of them is the Cheikh Bookstore (Librairie Cheikh) located in Tizi Ouzou…
Photo by Javier Santos Guzmán on UnsplashSpeeding on a packed rush-hour Metrobus from La Bombilla (Lightbulb) station for Chilpancingo (Wasp), I suddenly imagined myself as one of countless urban part…
Photo by Rodrigo JardónJazmina Barrera’s first novel, Cross-Stitch, translated by Christina MacSweeney, is an engrossing story of three friends as they come of age in Mexico City and while traveling t…
Photo by Angela BlankenshipIn Etaf Rum’s second novel, Evil Eye, a young Palestinian American artist and mother of two contends with the effects of intergenerational trauma and her complicated relatio…
Maysaloun Faraj, The Orange, 2002.Four artists of Iraqi descent are achieving global recognition for their paintings and handbag design. Both proud of their culture of origin and open to reso…
While working on a new verse translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, I discovered that skepticism toward my project tended to follow a specific trajectory. People who began with perhaps too much faith in…
Photo courtesy of Castle Rock Entertainment / RGR Collection / Alamy Stock PhotoFrom the Middle Ages to Seinfeld, schlemiel and schlimazel characters enjoy an interesting history. Veronica Esposito tr…
Arpino, Cicero’s birthplace, is about 100 kilometers southeast of Rome.These studies [of literature] are the food of youth, the delight of old age; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort o…
Photo courtesy of Green Feather BooksSpring in Oklahoma can be unpredictable, with sweltering heat, severe storms, and even cold snaps. With continual changes in the weather, you must…
Javier Fuentes’s debut novel, Countries of Origin, finds pastry chef Demetrio leaving the US and returning to his birth country, Spain. On the flight to Madrid, he meets Jacobo, which begins a will-th…
Dolores and Walter Neustadt in 2014 | Photo by Shevaun WilliamsThe World Literature Today organization and the University of Oklahoma have lost a dear friend. Dolores K. (Dottie) Neustadt pas…
See something once, and you see it everywhere. In Quito’s old town it was geraniums: on the curly-whirly balconies, in the porticoes of the old baroque buildings, and the great open squares, there wer…
Prince Shakur When They Tell You to Be Good Tin House This debut memoir made many best-of-fall lists and won the Hurston/Wright Crossover Award. Shakur’s memoir charts his political coming of age, com…
Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (1817), oil on canvas, 119.5 x 99.5 x 9 cm bpk Bildagentur / Hamburger Kunsthalle, SHK / Elke Walford / Art Resource, NY What is sehnsucht…
Photos courtesy of the authorIt’s a long way from Manhattan Island to King George Island—actually, it’s an epic trip from anywhere to Antarctica—and the wise traveler needs to make a stop, preferably…
Photos courtesy of the authorDuring a recent trip to the Netherlands, my family and I visited Amsterdam—an obvious stop—and found it stunning, the elaborate architecture contrasting w…
Whitman Road, Nebraska Sandhills | Photo © Michael Forsberg | www.michaelforsberg.comSometimes referred to as “flyover states,” the states of the middle US are home to much worth seeing, including des…
Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s first collection of short stories, Happy Stories, Mostly, was longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize and published, in Tiffany Tsao’s English translation, in the…