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“Kind of a Short-length Letter for a Full-length Film” by Luis Miguel Rivas (translated from the Colombian Spanish by Valentina Calvache) Artwork by Daniela Moreno Ramirez
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This story is from Rivas’ debut in the Latin American fiction industry: an anthology of short stories written from one of Colombia’s literary outcasts — he didn’t gain recognition until the Guadalajara Book Fair named him one of Latin America best-kept secrets, and his works went through the roof, with translations in French and the signing of his latest novel with Sony Pictures.
“Kind of a Short-length Letter for a Full-length Film” is a magnificent story that encloses and discloses — at the same time — Colombian reality seen through the eyes of a sharp writer,
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“Elisa” excerpt from the novel The One We Adored by Catherine Cusset (translated from the French by Armine Kotin Mortimer) Artwork by Ilan Averbuch
“Elisa”
excerpt from the novel
The One We Adored
by Catherine CussetIn this novel, Catherine speaks in the first person and addresses Thomas in the second, as if telling him the story of his life.
At the dinner I arrange for my husband’s birthday at the end of February, you meet Elisa. You are astonished to discover that this name, with its exotic sonorities, is simply spelled “Elisa,” not, as if it were French, “I-Laïza.” Even more surprised to see that this exotic Elisa I’ve been telling you so much about is so beautiful.
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Five poems from “Nomad” by João Luís Barreto Guimarães (translated from the Portuguese by António Ladeira and Calvin Olsen) Artwork by Anthony Ulinski
In the photographs of others
I am present in the past of lives I
have no knowledge of (men who saunter to the north
women who are headed south) in
photos
that tied me to several foreign cities
where my face remained retained
by mere chance. A photo is memory
(like a map
is voyage)
in them I’m anonymous at the corner of
a scene
just because I crossed that square
at that time. -
Global Voices Interviews *Poland* Bronka Nowicka and Katarzyna Szuster in conversation with LIT’s JP Apruzzese
The Polish version of this interview appeared in Biuro Literackie on 23 March 2020
Every so often a writer comes along who shows us what literature can and perhaps is meant to do — offering not so much a different perspective as a different way of seeing. A writer whose work inhabits a space undetermined by convention, trends, topics of current interest, unafraid to put aside the noise of daily life and explore the unnoticed – unseen because ignored – life that is nevertheless fully within our grasp.
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“Regnum” A short story by Bronka Nowicka (translated from the Polish by Katarzyna Szuster) Artwork by Lula Bajek
Regnum
Mad Mary, Ursula, insane Nina, haunted Agnes, guide me. Let me stick my hands in the pockets of your housecoats, where the keys are nestled in the bundles of your handkerchiefs. Let me steal them and set the door to the kingdom ajar.
At night Nina kneads bread and weeps into it. In the kitchen, the milk gives off light until she pours it into dun flour and then it goes out. The woman kneads the dough in the dark. The table squeaks,
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Five Poems from “In the morning we are glass” by Andra Schwarz (translated from the German by Caroline Wilcox Reul) Artwork by Hannu Töyrylä
In the morning we are glass
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Am morgen sind wir aus glas
My hands reach into emptiness what is left under earth
I walk to the black mill at its edge the spring
nothing moves I still hear the grinding of wheels
the spray of water and how they revolve decades
in the millworks the building the dismantling the change
finally the child from then no one knows what might have been
every year another ring grows wolves prowl in the
forest now that I’m gone everything is large &
