Nine vibrant, world-stitching (and un-stitching) short stories by Sudanese and South Sudanese women in English translation.
‘On Fiction’s Uneaten Meals’: A Talk with Donia Kamal
" Cooking is a central way in which the narrator feels; it reflects her state of mind and how she perceives the events and people around her. So it was more important for me to write about the process of making the food rather than about people eating it."
On Why Women’s Poetry in Arabic is Where It’s At
"For me, actually, I think we are impacted by male writers who are writing now, and they are writing about broken masculinity, which I don't like either. So maybe women are free of this, relatively. Maybe they are marginalized, so they have more opportunity to think, to write."
Women in Translation Month: 10 Books for 2021
"They love women's empowerment, if women's empowerment means sharing [online] a hijabi superhero comic without ever reading the messages behind it."
Yasmine Seale to Translate Al-Khansa for LAL Series
The poetry of Al-Khansa (~575-646) has been little-translated, although notably it appeared in the slender and beautiful chapbook of reflections Loss Sings, by author and translator James Montgomery, one of the executive editors of the Library of Arabic Literature project.
Lit & Found: Lyric Dispatches from Palestine
In case you have missed it, the special Baffler magazine section on poetry from Palestine, curated by Fady Joudah, continues to unspool.
Adil Babikir, Reem Abou-El-Fadl Win Global Africa Translation Fellowships
The winners of this first-ever translation fellowship were announced by the Africa Institute, which launched the initiative as part of its African Languages and Translation Program.
Short Fiction in Translation: Bushra Fadil’s ‘Phosphorus at the Bottom of a Well’
"Forty hours passed, and Sa’ad’s memory was a moon hanging over the perturbed sky of the African continent. "
Hilal Chouman’s ‘World of Dogs’
"The next day, he was watching a livestream on television when he saw his dream on the screen. The streets of Beirut were flooded with mounds of garbage. This was the first step, he thought. Next, the piles of rubble would appear, and the people would vanish, leaving the buildings deserted."
Summer Re-runs: On Turning ‘Sayyidat al-Qamr’ into ‘Celestial Bodies’ and the Tyranny of the New
"Oh!! Titles… sometimes I think I stress over titles – and opening sentences – for more hours than I spend on the rest of the translation."
Celebrating Author Jabbour Douaihy (1949-2021) and Publisher Fares Sassine (1947-2021)
"Jabbour Douaihy we are proud to have lived in the same era as you!"
Lit & Found: Bouchaib Gadir’s ‘Small Dreams,’ ‘The Stranger,’ ‘Joy’
"The source of love opened / And a lily emerged."