Essay Beyond The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales May 02, 2022 The lack of Chinese fairy tales in English translation has been a reality that hinders not only academic studies of the fairy tale, but also the cross-cultural understanding of Chinese traditions in general. Read More
Essay Kafka鈥檚 鈥淯ltimate Things鈥�: A new reading of the Z眉rau aphorisms April 27, 2022 As 快色直播 celebrates the launch of a new annotated and freshly translated edition of Kafka鈥檚 aphorisms, the Press has invited me to supply a couple of amuse-bouches from the two introductory passages to the collection, namely my Translator鈥檚 Note plus a brief excerpt from Reiner Stach鈥檚 Foreword. Read More
Podcast A Vertical Art: On Poetry April 26, 2022 In聽A Vertical Art, acclaimed poet Simon Armitage takes a refreshingly common-sense approach to an art form that can easily lend itself to grand statements and hollow gestures. Read More
Essay Poems from After Callimachus April 20, 2022 In After Callimachus, esteemed poet and critic Stephanie Burt鈥檚 attentive translations and inspired adaptations introduce the work, spirit, and letter of Callimachus to today鈥檚 poetry readers. Read More
Essay A look inside Lives of Houses March 31, 2022 The writing of lives often involves writing about houses. Bringing a聽house聽to life through observation, familiarity, memory, or excavation can be聽a聽vital part of narrating the life of an individual, a family, or a聽group:聽life-writing as housework. Read More
Essay Arnold Weinstein on The Lives of Literature January 29, 2022 The Lives of Literature: Reading, Teaching, Knowing as the subtitle suggests, is after large game: why we go to literature, what its value might be in a world increasingly devoted to 鈥渋nformation,鈥� and what a career in teaching has taught me, as well as my students. Read More
Essay Bambi: The lonely destiny of outsiders January 14, 2022 Today, almost all the animals in the world do not and cannot determine their destinies. It was not always like this. Before the emergence of human beings thousands of years ago, animals were free to roam the planet as they wished. Read More
Podcast 鈥淏ambi鈥� isn鈥檛 about what you think it鈥檚 about January 05, 2022 Most of us think we know the story of Bambi鈥攂ut do we?聽The Original Bambi聽is an all-new, illustrated translation of a literary classic that presents the story as it was meant to be told. Read More
Podcast Billy Wilder on Assignment December 19, 2021 Before Billy Wilder became the screenwriter and director of iconic films like Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot, he worked as a freelance reporter, first in Vienna and then in Weimar Berlin. Read More
Essay Jane Austen鈥檚 beginnings December 10, 2021 There is an excellent cartoon, first published in Punch magazine, that depicts Jane Austen sitting in her publisher鈥檚 office and getting what we might call some mixed feedback on her latest submission: 鈥榃e like the plot, Miss Austen, but all this effing and blinding will have to go鈥�. Read More
Podcast Listen in: Now Comes Good Sailing December 03, 2021 The world is never done catching up with Henry David Thoreau (1817鈥�1862), the author of聽Walden, 鈥淐ivil Disobedience,鈥� and other classics. A prophet of environmentalism and vegetarianism, an abolitionist, and a critic of materialism and technology, Thoreau even seems to have anticipated a world of social distancing in his famous experiment at Walden Pond. Read More
Essay Bob Dylan鈥檚 鈥淢urder Most Foul鈥� and National Memory November 22, 2021 This week marks the 58th anniversary of the assassination of JFK. Last year鈥檚 anniversary went nearly unnoticed in the press. Read More
Essay Roger Luckhurst on Gothic: An Illustrated History October 28, 2021 How can you hope to navigate a genre that starts with a bunch of gloomy British poets brooding in crepuscular graveyards in the 1740s and ended up recently delivering us the sixth film in the Sharknado franchise (where killer sharks get hurled around by tornados, obviously)? Read More
Essay Edgar Allan Poe鈥檚 suburban dream October 27, 2021 If there were ever an American writer you would not associate with the suburbs, it鈥檚 Edgar Allan Poe. His popular image tends to be that of an isolated figure, oblivious to his surroundings. Read More
Video Hosts and Guests: Readings by poet Nate Klug October 07, 2021 Nate Klug has been hailed by the聽Threepenny Review聽as a poet who is 鈥渁n original in Eliot鈥檚 sense of the word.鈥� In聽Hosts and Guests, his exciting second collection, Klug revels in slippery roles and shifting environments. Read More
