Literary translation again filled the news in 2014. There were firsts to celebrate—the earliest-known Arabic stories were finally translated into English, and Deep Vellum Publishing, a new translation-only publisher founded in, of all places, Dallas, Texas, published its first book—but also the … [Read more...]
BEA 2015: Books by Franzen, Hallberg Among Most Talked About
May 30, 2015 by
BEA is about the future: the books that publishers are presenting, authors are signing, and booksellers and librarians are noting for the upcoming seasons. This year, as always, we walked the aisles to ask our favorite folks in the know what upcoming books they are excited about. The two novels … [Read more...]
I read books by only minority authors for a year. It showed me just how white our reading world is.
May 17, 2015 by
White authors reign in book reviews, bestseller lists, literary awards and Amazon.com recommendations. In 2014, I decided that for the entire year, I would not read books written by white authors. My goal was to address the reading practices I developed growing up in Australia, where white … [Read more...]
‘Women of Letters’ revives lost art with new voices
April 12, 2015 by
“Dear all the women over the entire span of human history, I wish I knew how to help. “But not much has changed in some respects; why is there even the so called progressive society when women are still blamed and shamed; I wish I knew what to do [...]” So said award-winning Australian poet … [Read more...]
Indonesia’s First User-Generated Film Something to Percolate Over
December 7, 2014 by
Readers are hard to please when their favorite books are brought onto the big screen. So to avoid falling short of expectations the team behind an upcoming film decided to produce it based entirely on user input. “Filosofi Kopi” (“Coffee Philosophy”), inspired by the 2006 novel of the same name, … [Read more...]
