Mirrors & Masks, Spring 2009: now online

We are pleased to announce that the new issue of eXchanges, Mirrors & Masks, is now available online. It contains fiction, poetry, essays, and demented manifestos translated from Turkish, Bulgarian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Italian, and Latin, plus an interview with former eXchanges editor Becka McKay. Enjoy!

-the editors

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Margaret Schwartz and Macedonio Fernández

Margaret Schwartz, whose translations of Macedonio Fernández we published in an earlier issue of eXchanges, has been working on the Argentinian writer’s most famous work, The Museum of Eterna’s Novel, which will be published by Open Letter Books next January. The latest issue of The Quarterly Conversation includes an excerpt:

Horrible art and the accumulated glories of the past, which have always existed, are a result of the following: the sonorousness of language and the existence of a public; without this sonorousness, only thinking and creating would remain; without a clamoring public, art would not be drowned. Under these conditions, Literature would be pure art, and there would be many more beautiful works than there are at present: there would be three or four Cervantes, the Cervantes of the Quijote, without the stories, Quevedo the humorist and poet of passion, without the moralizing orator, various Gómez de la Sernas. We’ll be liberated from the likes of Calderón, the Prince of falsetto, from lack of feeling, which is poor taste itself; from the likes of Góngora, at least from time to time, with his exclamations of “Ay Fabio, o sorrow!” We’d have three Heines, each of sarcasm and sadness, or D’Annunzios to limitlessly versify passion. Happily, we would have only the first act of Faust, and in compensation various Poes, and various Bovaries—with their sad affliction of loveless appetite, despicable and bloody—and this other, lacerating absurdity: Hamlet’s lyric of sorrow, which convinces and breeds sympathy, despite the false psychologism of its source.

Good stuff! Congratulations, Margaret!

-ar

Suzane Adam and Becka McKay to read in Iowa City

Laundry by Suzane Adam, tr. Becka Mara McKay

Prizewinning Israeli novelist Suzane Adam and translator Becka Mara McKay will be embarking on a cross-country tour in celebration of the publication of McKay’s translation of Adam’s first novel to appear in English, Laundry, published last fall by Iowa City’s Autumn Hill Books.

One of their stops will be in Iowa City on the 21st of April, when they will give a reading at Shambaugh House on the University of Iowa campus. eXchanges is pleased to announce our co-sponsorship of the event, along with Autumn Hill Books; the university’s International Writing Program, School of Art and Art History, Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, and International Programs; Words Without Borders; and the Israeli Consulate in New York.

Other events will be readings in Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Riverside, as well as the “Women Translating Women” panel at the Center for Literary Translation in New York on the 29th.

McKay got an M.F.A. in translation at Iowa and was the editor of eXchanges for several years, so we are very excited to participate in this event. Laundry is also a book close to our heart. You can read thoughtful reviews of it at Three Percent and at Words Without Borders, which also has an excerpt.

Please come by Shambaugh House on April 21st if you’re in the area. We are offering delicious food, wonderful literature, and scintillating company, starting at 7 p.m.

Martha Tennent/Mercè Rodoreda

Martha Tennent, whose translation of Catalan writer Mercè Rodoreda’s short story “On the Train” we published in our Winter 2008 issue of eXchanges, has recently translated Rodoreda’s novel, Death in Spring, which will come out from Open Letter in May. Chad Post has written at Three Percent today about early enthusiastic responses to the novel and announced an event at the Ramon Llull Institute in New York on May 2, a reading by Jessica Lange:

The Time of the Doves is the most acclaimed novel by one of Catalonia’s best-loved writers, Mercè Rodoreda (1908-1983), a master when it comes to explain a story with powerful vividness. Before the reading, Martha Tennent and Chad Post will present the latest novel by Mercè Rodoreda to be translated into English: Death in Spring. Read by Jessica Lange. Directed by Joan Ollé.

Congratulations to Martha Tennent and Open Letter for their success.

-ar

eXchanges Spring 2009: Mirrors & Masks

Just a reminder that eXchanges is accepting submissions for our Spring issue until March 20, 2009. Details below. You can take a look at past issues here.

Call for Submissions

eXchanges will be accepting variations on the theme MIRRORS & MASKS for our spring 2009 issue until March 20, 2009. Short stories, novel excerpts, literary nonfiction, and poetry are all welcome, as well as critical essays on translation.

Submission Guidelines

To be considered, submissions must include:

•Both the original and the translation
•Biographies and photos of both author and translator
•A short note on the process of translation
•Permission for online publication for both languages
•Submissions should total no more than ten pages in length

Electronic submissions are strongly preferred. Please send both original and translation as .doc attachments to studorg-exchanges@uiowa.edu.

Direct paper submissions to eXchanges, Bowman House, 230 N. Clinton St., Iowa City, IA, 52242, U.S.A.

We do accept simultaneous submissions; however, please inform us if your work is under consideration elsewhere.

new issue of eXchanges

So this is shameless self-promotion, I know. But eXchanges is launching its new issue, Roots & Branches, today and we’d love to share it with everyone! Read it on our website at www.uiowa.edu/~xchanges/

Our launch party is tonight, too, so if you are in the area, please stop in. It’s at 8pm in Shambaugh House at 430 N. Clinton Street in Iowa City. Puja Birla and two former editors of eXchanges, Emily Goedde and Diana Thow will be reading their translations, published in this issue.

We’ll also be celebrating the new designation of Iowa City as the third UNESCO City of Literature! (See our previous post for more)
-mb

John Pluecker& Rosario Sanmiguel

Sucre Alley translator John Pluecker published his translations of Rosario Sanmiguel’s gorgeous short stories earlier this year with Arte Público Press.  Read more about the book here.  Buy the book here.