- Open Letter Books
- Three Percent Problem
- Translated Book Award
- Translation Studies
- Translation Database
As every poet/writer/creative writing associate professor already knows, the AWP Conference kicks off today in Boston. For those who don’t know, this is a wild weekend of panels, readings, more readings, book exhibits, more poetry readings, drinking, bad dancing by poets, readings, and general literary funtimes.1
Once again, Open Letter will be attending (both Kaija and I will be there), and once again, we have a table at the end of the end of the world. So if you’re lost up on the second floor of the exhibition center, come see us at Z24, which is probably next to the Dianetics stand, that weirdo puppet guy, and some grad student who makes bongs and bookmarks out of beer cans.2
If you do make it to our stand, we will greet you with a free Thousand Morons T-shirt, and will sell you any of our books—from The Canvas to Maidenhair to Death in Spring to Zone to The Private Lives of Trees to Ergo—for $10 each.
So come see us! And if you can’t find our booth, just check all the parties. We’re gonna rip this scene up and teach you flannel children how publishers party.
1 Oh, and desperation and skinny jeans. Lots and lots of desperation. The vast majority of attendees are young hipsters writers looking to break into print. So yeah. It’s like a casting couch for lyric poets!
2 Seriously, AWP Adminstrators. Why the shit are we relegated to this part of the exhibition hall? Who do I have to sleep with to get Open Letter—one of the more prestigious independent presses in the country—into a space near our comprable presses? It’s really irritating to be floors away from NYRB and New Directions and Graywolf and all the areas where people actually buy books . . . Seriously. There are start-up presses publishing single poems on the back of napkins that have better placement than we do. These presses won’t even be around next year, after their bearded directors blow all their sales money (“Oh, I just love the concreteness of your publishing enterprise. Napkin poems make me feel so alive.”) on fake mushrooms and more skinny jeans. Then again, writers generally don’t, and creative writing programs definitely don’t have any sense of perspective, so I guess it only makes sense that your exhibition hall layout is so jacked. Congratulations!
It’s worth noting that the AWP bookfair will be open to the public on Saturday, February 2nd from 8:30am till 5:30pm. The exhibit halls are on the 2nd and 3rd floors of the Hilton New York (1335 Avenue of the Americas, btw 53rd and 54th).
The exhibitors list is pretty amazing, and according to CLMP (the Council for Literary Magazines and Presses), this will be “the country’s largest independent press fair.”
Definitely worth coming out, especially since most of these publishers will be offering significant discounts . . .
We don’t usually post event info here, but based on the nature of (and Three Percent/Open Letter connection to) this event, I think it’s definitely worth highlighting.
All this info is repeated below, but as part of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference (a.k.a. AWP), the Center for the Art of Translation is hosting a happy hour on Friday night at the Times Square Information Center (really).
Here are all the details:
World Literature at the Crossroads
Translation Happy Hour and Reading
The Center for the Art of Translation invites you to a celebration of global voices in Times Square with acclaimed authors and translators from 15 years of TWO LINES: World Writing in Translation, including:
- Suzanne Jill Levine reading JORGE VOLPI (from Spanish)
- Geoffrey Brock reading GUIDO GOZZANO (from Italian)
- Alexis Levitin reading ASTRID CABRAL (from Portuguese)
- Susan Bernofsky reading YOKO TAWADA (from German)
- Trudy Balch reading MATILDA KOEN-SARANO (from Ladino)
- Douglas Basford reading JEAN SENAC (from French)
as well as Luisa Igloria reading from Tagalog and Erica Weitzman reading from Albanian
and C.M. Mayo with a tribute to special guest GREGORY RABASSA
Gregory Rabassa will be signing copies of our latest anthology, New World/New Words: Recent Writing from the Americas.
Refreshments will be served.
Join us to toast world literature and translation in the beautifully-restored landmark Embassy Movie Theatre on 7th Avenue, at the crossroads of the world!
Friday February 1, 2008
6:30-8:00 pm
Times Square Information Center
1560 Broadway (7th Avenue between 46th and 47th Streets)
Free
For more information about this event and the TWO LINES World Library, visit www.catranslation.org.
Should be an amazing event, and I’ll definitely be there—along with other Reading the World publishers—this line-up is pretty amazing. . . . And it’s always fun to party with international lit people. Not to mentiuon, Open Letter will be publishing Jorge Volpi’s No Sera la Tierra in the fall of 2009, and an excerpt from Vilnius Poker by Ricardas Gavelis (forthcoming from OL in Feb 2009) is in the next issue of Two Lines . . . (One of these days we’ll post a complete list of our forthcoming books.)
Anyway, I hope to meet some of you there . . .
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