PEN America #13 [New Issue III]

Also arriving in yesterday’s mail was the new issue of PEN America, making it a pretty big day in literary magazines . . . Anyway, this issue is entitled “Lovers,” a theme backed up on the PEN website with this forum, which you can participate in, and which currently features various authors writing about “a writer who is especially dear to you—a literary mentor, forebear, friend, or lover . . .”

Anyway, in terms of contents, the highlights, in my opinion, are:

• Admiration and “The Decision” by Quim Monzo, translated by Mary Ann Newman (LOVE Monzo, especially the stories in Guadalajara, which we’re bringing out next month);

• “Probabilidad” by Eloy Urroz, and translated by Ezra E. Fitz;

• “Endless Arrival” is a transcript of a conversation with Adam Gopnik, Eduardo Lago, Anne Landsman, Jose Manuel Prieto, and Salman Rushdie that took place during the last PEN World Voices Festival. (I actually caught this event . . .);

• “Geographies of the Possible” is a conversation with Alberto Mobilio, Inga Kuznetsova, Jonathan Lethem, Eshkol Nevo, and Andrzej Stasiuk that also took place during the last PEN World Voices, but which I missed;

• Speaking of Eshkol Nevo (whose Homesick received a very nice review from Three Percent mainstay Monica Carter), this issue also includes a piece by him entitled Before the Next World Cup, and translated by Sondra Silverston;

• And there are many other translations, including pieces by Ameile Nothomb, Faraj Bayrakdar, Laura Lindstedt, Arthur Rimbaud, Natalia Sannikova, Akinwumi Isola, Linor Goralik, and Dea Loher.

You can find most of this issue available here, and you can order the complete issue here.