Idlewild Write-up
What kind of dreamer opens a bookstore in a recession, gives it a nostalgic name that means nothing to most people under 40, and stocks it with travel guides and obscure foreign novels? Meet David Del Vecchio, owner of Idlewild Books, who says business is thriving despite the odds against independent bookstores, the ...
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Congrats Drenka!
Congratulations to our hero, Drenka Willen, who was just given the 2009 London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award in International Publishing. Check this out from the LBF site: Drenka Willen joined Harcourt as a translator and freelance editor in the nineteen-sixties. She took over day-to-day duties for the Helen ...
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A Sample of Saer
Next year we’re publishing the first of three novels by Juan José Saer, and Steve Dolph (the co-founder and co-editor, with Brandon Holmquest, of the translation journal and soon-to-be-book-publisher Calque) will be translating all three of the novels. The other day Steve sent us a paragraph from his translation of ...
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Katherine Silver wins NCBA Translation Award
The 28th Northern California Book Awards were held in San Francisco last weekend, and, in conjunction with the Center for the Art of Translation, they awarded a Translation Award “to bring attention to all the wonderful translations coming out of the Bay Area and to encourage local audiences to read more international ...
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Cavafy reviewed in the Times
U of R’s own James Longenbach reviewed a new translation of Cavafy in the Times this weekend: “A Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe.” With this sentence the novelist E. M. Forster introduced the Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine Cavafy to the ...
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2009 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize shortlist
They’ve just announced the shortlist for the Independent Foreign Ficton prize: Voiceover by Céline Curiol, translated by Sam Richard from the French Beijing Coma by Ma Jian, translated by Flora Drew from the Chinese The Siege by Ismail Kadare, translated by David Bellos from the Albanian The Armies by Evelio ...
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PEN World Voices Festival Schedule
Over at the PEN website they’ve announced the full schedule for this year’s World Voices festival. It’s hard to believe, but this year they’re celebrating the 5th anniversary of the festival. After the first one, I wondered if they’d ever be able to pull it off again—it’s an ...
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