From the Archives: “By allowing the reader to hear these voices, their pravda, instead of her own, Alexievich can better give voice to the feelings of disenfranchisement many witnesses feel in the current, capitalist Russia.”
“Every story begins with a feeling…And then I sit down, and try to build a house, and put that feeling inside, where it can live forever.” Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry talks with Ian Singleton about her debut collection.
“Everything started from a lunchtime conversation with my parents, randomly talking about our old building in Ukraine”: Maria Reva talks with Isaac Yuen about her debut collection, Good Citizens Need Not Fear, which takes place in the pre- and post-fall USSR.
“In a sense, the 21st century of Demolition Night is an outdated future, since its political satire was conceived before late 2016. These days, everything before that year’s November feels like ancient history. In the Trump era, satire has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible.”
“It’s these aetherial worlds referred to in the title, these never-existing possibilities that Tolstaya explores through her writing. Texts, stories, are the essences that construct our lives. Whether consciously or unconsciously, whether intentionally fabricating or telling our version of the truth, we’re creating, with language, a narrative.”
“The collection, I hope, challenges assumptions about Southeast Michigan, and the people who live here”: Laura Hulthen Thomas chats with Ian Singleton about her debut collection, States of Motion, out today from Wayne State University Press.
“What is the purpose of one culture translating another? One reason Slavic departments thrive during political crises would seem to be so that we can better understand the cultures of the post-Soviet East. Another reason, though, may be something more akin to the motives of the CIA in translating Doctor Zhivago.”
In the introduction to their forthcoming translation of Apollo in the Grass: Selected Poems, by Aleksandr Kushner, Carol Ueland and Robert Carnevale write that “translators simply have to admit that most of the music of most all lyric poetry, and most of its phenomenal presence, stay at home, in the native tongue. But ‘music of language’ is a metaphor.” Ian Singleton examines how this claim plays out in their translation of Kushner’s poetry.
“I wanted the book not to look like other people’s books. And to have a kind of crazy logic of its own”: Charles Baxter with Ian Singleton on his new collection, There’s Something I Want You to Do.
“Even though recent history might seem to have betrayed Bezmozgis’ intentions, what’s important in The Betrayers are the people who live, toil, and suffer in Crimea and Israel-Palestine.”
