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“The Discomfort of Evening” by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld [#WITMonth]

In an amazing coincidence, we were already planning on running this excerpt from The Discomfort of Evening today as part of our Women in Translation Month coverage, and lo and behold, the book just happened to win the International Man Booker this morning! Congrats to Marieke Lucas Rijneveld and Michele Hutchison, and to ...

Spanish-Language Speculative Fiction by Women in Translation. [#WITMonth]

Today's post is by Rachel Cordasco, founder and curator of Speculative Fiction in Translation, co-translator of Creative Surgery by Clelia Farris, and is working on a book about speculative fiction from around the world.  Despite 2020 being a downright awful year, it has given us several excellent works of ...

A SINGLE SWALLOW by Zhang Ling [#WITMonth]

A Single Swallow by Zhang Ling, translated from the Chinese by Shelly Bryant (AmazonCrossing) Forthcoming on October 1st from AmazonCrossing, A Single Swallow by Zhang Ling, the award-winning author of nine novels along with several short story collections. Here's the jacket copy: On the day of the historic 1945 ...

New Spanish Literature: 10 of 30 [#WITMonth]

As part of the buildup to being Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2021, the Spanish government launched a program last year under the (possibly confusing) name of "10 of 30." The plan is that each year, a new anthology featuring ten authors in their 30s will be released—all of which are translated by Katie ...

Open Letter Sale [#WITMonth]

This post is a bit of a cheat so that I can get caught back up tomorrow with my "post a day" promise, but I want to make sure that everyone knows that for all of August we're offering 40% off on all Open Letter books written by women OR translated by women. All you need to do is use WITMONTH at checkout. Here's a complete ...

An Interview with Karen Sotelino [#WITMonth]

For today's Women in Translation post, we're going to highlight a female translator, Karen Sherwood Sotelino. Sotelino translates from Portuguese and has worked on a couple incredibly big names in Brazilian literature—Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis and Raduan Nassar. A few years back, she gave this interview with Luciana ...

Polish Reportage [#WITMonth]

Starting in 2021, Open Letter will be launching a "Polish Reportage" series. This came out of a trip I made to Krakow back in 2017 (when the Astros cheated their way to a World Series, which, remember when that mattered?) to attend the Conrad Festival and meet with a variety of authors, editors, and the like. I've always been ...

A Very Incomplete List of Books by Women in Translation in 2020 [#WITMonth]

I know that I'm a day behind—trying to make up for that right now—but my goal for Women in Translation Month 2020 is to post something each and every day of the month related to this topic. I'm inviting any and all readers, translators, publishers to contribute to this and, with a lot of luck a bit of work, we should have ...

“Vladivostok Circus” by Elisa Shua Dusapin & Aneesa Abbas Higgins [Excerpt]

Today's #WITMonth post is a really special one—with a special offer. What you'll find below is an excerpt from the very start of Vladivostok Circus by Elisa Shua Dusapin & Aneesa Abbas Higgins. You might remember Dusapin & Higgins as the winners of the 2021 National Book Award for Literature in Translation ...

“Un Amor” by Sara Mesa and Katie Whittemore [Excerpt]

Today's #WITMonth post is an except from Un Amor by Sara Mesa and Katie Whittemore, coming out in October. This was the "book of the year" in Spain when it came out in 2o20, and was praised to the skies by all the major Spanish newspapers and media outlets. There's even a film version coming out this fall directed by Isabel ...

“The River” by Laura Vinogradova and Kaija Straumanis [Excerpt]

Today's #WITMonth post is a preview for an Open Letter title coming out next summer, which isn't even available for sale anywhere yet. It's River by Laura Vinogradova, translated by Kaija Straumanis, and part of Straumanis's "Translator Triptych" coming next summer. The novel was the Latvian representative for the European ...

“The Lecture” by Lydie Salvayre and Linda Coverdale [Excerpt]

Today's #WITMonth post is an excerpt from The Lecture by Lydie Salvayre, translated by Linda Coverdale, a wonderfully funny and playful French writer who Dalkey published for quite a while (The Power of Flies, Everyday Life, The Company of Ghosts, Portrait of the Writer as a Domesticated Animal), and might again! Warren ...

“Flame Trees in May” by Karla Marrufo and Allison A. deFreese [Excerpt]

To celebrate Women in Translation Month, we will be posting excerpts, readings, summaries from the Translation Database, former Two Month Review seasons, and various special offers—so stay tuned! And to kick things off (technically a day before the start of #WITMonth, but whatever, time is a construct), here is an ...

Two Spanish Books for Women in Translation Month

Like usual, this post is a mishmash of all the thoughts I've had over the past week, mostly while out on a 30-mile bike ride. (I need to get in as many of these as possible before winter, which is likely to hit Rochester in about a month.) Rather than try and weave these into one single coherent post, I'm just going to throw ...

40% Off All Open Letter Books Written or Translated by Women

Women in Translation Month is always an exciting time to discover, read, discuss, and celebrate books by women from around the world. It was created by Meytal Radzinski back in 2014 (who we're hoping to have on a podcast this month), and has since spawned numerous articles, events, and even the Warwick Prize for Women in ...

Why Are Meritocracy [Two Castilian Books]

I have two books that I want to talk about this week, and one related publishing/cultural issue, but before I get into all of that, I thought it would be interesting to dig a bit into some of the data from last week's "Spain By the Numbers" post. As I mentioned in that same post, over the course of this month, I'm going to ...

August 2018 Newsletter

Celebrate Women in Translation Month with 40% Off All Open Letter Books Written by Women OR Translated by Women Women in Translation Month is always an exciting time to discover, read, discuss, and celebrate books by women from around the world. It was created by Meytal Radzinski back in 2014, and has since spawned ...

The Very Pleasant Post

Usually I try and make the first post of the month one that's based around some sort of statistical analysis of what's going on with literature in translation. Since this is Women in Translation Month (#WIT2018), it would make a great deal of sense to run a bunch of data about women writers in translation, women translators, ...

Women in Translation Month [Throwback No.2]

As many of you may have noticed already, August is widely considered Women in Translation Month (look for the #WITMonth hashtag basically anywhere). Since Open Letter has published its fair share of baller women authors over the past ten years, we thought we’d take a few posts to highlight a handful of our all-time favorite ...

Women in Translation Month [Throwback No.1]

As many of you may have noticed already, August is widely considered Women in Translation Month (look for the #WITMonth hashtag basically anywhere). Since Open Letter has published its fair share of baller women authors over the past ten years, we thought we’d take a few posts to highlight a handful of our all-time ...