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Our next Reading the World Conversation Series event takes place tomorrow and features four international authors currently at the Ledig House, a wonderful residency program for international writers.
The event takes place at 6 p.m. in the Hawkins-Carlson room in University of Rochester’s Rush Rhees library. Totally free, totally open to the public, and totally entertaining. All the details can also be found on this Facebook event page.
And yes—we will record these readings and hopefully at some point Nate and/or E.J. will do that magic editing stuff so that I can link to them here . . . (Actually, we should be able to make all three RTWCS fall events available early next week.)
Here are the bios of the four people who will be reading and talking here tomorrow night:
Susana García Iglesias (Mexico, Fiction)
Born in Mexico City’s historic center, Susana a is the inaugural recipient of the Aura Estrada Prize, which she won for her fiction submission, Barracuda. It was praised by jury president Margo Glantz for “the enormous force and charisma of a risk-taking writing whose fury ignites like pyromania.” Susana has worked as a bartender and dog stylist; her interests include: mixology, photography, old cars, high speed, rock and roll, and literature.
Nir Baram (Israel, Fiction/Nonfiction)
Born in Jerusalem, Nir graduated with an MA in Literature from Tel-Aviv University. He has published four books, and was nominated for the Sapir Prize (The Israeli Booker award) in 2007. Nir won the Prime Minister Award for Hebrew literature in 2010. He serves as editor of the Classical World Wide Series in Am-Oved publishing house and writes for the Ha’aretz Newspaper.
Perihan Mağden (Turkey, Fiction)
Perihan was born in Istanbul. She majored in psychology and traveled extensively in Asia. She published first novel, Messenger Boy Murders, in 1991. Perihan recently left her post writing a regular column for over 12 years. She has five novels that have been translated to twelve languages.
Tom Burke (US, Fiction)
Born in Chicago, Thomas is now the Program Manager of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College. In the past he served as Director of Summer Literary Seminars in Kenya, Assistant Director of SLS in Russia, and as the Event and Promotions Manager at Words without Borders, an online magazine of international literature in translation. He received an MFA from UMASS Amherst and his work has appeared in Tin House and The Brooklyn Rail, among other publications, and is forthcoming in the St. Petersburg Review and the Collagist.
So if you’re in the area, you should definitely come out—this is always one of the best RTWCS events . . .
Reviewed by Rachael Daum
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Reviewed by Camila Santos
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
French author—philosopher, poet, novelist—de Roblès writes something approaching the Great (Latin) American Novel, about Brazilian characters, one of whom is steeped in the life of the seventeenth century polymath (but almost always erroneous) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Eleazard von Wogau, a. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
A rich, beautifully written, consistently surprising satire, Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses boasts an elaborate, engrossing plot with disarming twists and compelling characters both challenged and challenging. It leads the reader on a strange pilgrimage—often melancholy but certainly rewarding—through a China. . .
Reviewed by Emily Davis
Maybe I’ve been watching too much Doctor Who lately, and I’m therefore liable to see everything through science-fiction-colored glasses. But when the pages of The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira refer to “the totality of the present and of eternity”. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
