From Bitter Water Opera, which will be published this month by Graywolf Press. I walked down a thin path, spotting in the distance a tall stone wall, as instructed. My…
Years later, my grandmother would still tell people that I learned to swim in a movie star’s pool, though she always said this with the same slanted tone and pinched…
If you had asked ten-year-old me about my favorite author, I would have replied unhesitatingly that it was J.R.R. Tolkien. The experience of reading The Lord of the Rings had been…
From Trondheim, which was published last month by Bellevue Literary Press. On the day their son was going to die, Lil had given herself the task of carrying forty-plus sacks…
From a fictional dialogue with his father in his novel Change, which will be published this month by Harvill Secker. Translated from the French by John Lambert. Before meeting Elena…
From a speech published in the book El arte de la distorsión. Vásquez is the author, most recently, of the story collection Songs for the Flames. Translated from the Spanish.…
From Everything and Less, which will be published next month by Verso. A version of this essay appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of American Literary History. There is a…
By Patrick Chamoiseau, from Slave Old Man, which will be published next month by the New Press. The book was originally published by Gallimard in 1997. Chamoiseau, who is from…
His wife had worked at jigsaw puzzles like he imagined beavers worked at logs. If you were a beaver and you worked at logs, you probably had a saying or…
By Lydia Davis, from a story collection in progress. Davis is editing a book of essays that will be published next year. She is a writer and translator.