literature

As a child, professor and noted author Joanna Scott played with figurines collected by her great-grandfather, Armand de Potter. After unearthing a trunk filled with diaries and documents, Scott realized her great-grandfather wasn’t the man he seemed. This disquieting discovery became the basis for her new novel, De Potter’s Grand Tour.

Films like This is Spinal Tap have built large followings around their use of awkward and cringeworthy comedy. But according to Jason Middleton, assistant professor of English and director of the film and media studies program, the use of staged “awkwardness” extends far beyond the domain of contemporary popular culture and into the earliest days of filmmaking.

The award is the only prize of its kind to honor the best original works of international literature and poetry published in the United States over the previous year.

The Best Translated Book Award -- launched in 2008 by Three Percent, the University's website for translated literature -- is the only prize of its kind to honor the best original works of international fiction and poetry published in the United States.

The literary translation press has been selected to receive an Art Works grant to expand its work in promoting emerging international authors.

Kathleen Parthé's book A Herzen Reader features one hundred essays and editorials by Russian radical thinker Alexander Herzen.

This year's event was part of "Literary Mews," a new component of the PEN World Voices Festival organized by the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.

A testament to the diversity of books available to English readers, the lists of finalists include poets from China, Romania, and Macedonia, and prose writers from Djibouti, Russia, Iran, and Argentina

Selected from a pool of 1,509, the press was awarded $45,000 to support the promotion of books in translation and the continuation of the translation centric website, Three Percent.