In Ether for Authors, Porter Anderson looks at the NY Times’ wistful call for ‘more gatekeepers’ for authors; copyright contentions; ‘thought verbs,’ and more.
Using Arabic Literature to Bridge Cultures in a Post 9/11 World
Arabia Books, celebrating its 5th anniversary, is on a mission to promote cross-cultural communication by publishing English translations of top Arabic writers.
Books in Translation: It’s Time for Others to Join the Fight
The publishers of UK’s Stork Books argue that major publishers and the media in the UK and USA underestimate the audience for translated books and are making a big mistake.
Case Study: And Other Stories’ “Editorial Crowd-sourcing” for Translations
UK publisher And Other Stories relies on reading groups to help choose which books to translate. Here’s a look from inside the German reading group in Berlin.
Abu Dhabi Training, Day 2: If Arab Politics Can Change, So Can Publishers
Day two of this year’s professional training courses for publishers on the campus of NYU Abu Dhabi, documented by Salwa Shakhshir, covered bestsellers, e-books.
SNOB: Billionaire Backs Rebirth of the Russian Literary Magazine
It’s difficult to find a Russian author of note who has not written for SNOB, billionaire Mikhail Prokorov’s luxury lit mag. By Daniel Kalder Going back to the 19th century literary journals have played an important role in Russian culture. Indeed, no lesser a figure than Dostoevsky edited not one, but two following his return from Siberian exile. After 1917, …
BOOK REVIEW: Solo by Rana Dasgupta (UK/Bulgaria)
By Gwendolyn Dawson Solo by Rana Dasgupta is a diptych of a novel composed of two related but independent halves. In the first half, a blind, 100-year-old Bulgarian man named Ulrich reminiscences about his life from the vantage point of his squalid apartment overlooking a train station in Sofia, the Bulgarian town in which Ulrich spent the vast majority of …
IPAF Mentors Young Arabic Writers, Produces Anthology
By Edward Nawotka Fiction writing in Arabic has suffered from neglect in international circles, with most of the attention going to poets or political manifestos. But things are starting to change and Western-style workshops are popping up around the Middle East. Over the next nine days, seven promising young Arabic writers will be taking part in a unique writers workshop …
Russia’s Young, Exportable Writers
By Chad W. Post Back in 2000, the “Debut Prize” was established by the Pokolenie (Generation) Foundation to support Russian writers under the age of 25. Ten years later, the best works generated by this competition will be made available to English and Chinese readers. According to Olga Slavnikova, winner of the Russian Booker Prize and director of the Debut …
Krauss Leads Abu Dhabi Book Fair into a New Era
By Chip Rossetti In 2009, when Monika Krauss took the position of General Manager of KITAB, the organization that manages the annual Abu Dhabi International Book Fair (ADIBF), she was coming full circle. Although born in Iraq to a German father and an Iraqi mother, Monika Krauss had spent most of her life somewhere else, having been raised in Nigeria …