A Visit to the Zoo
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Rattawut Lapcharoensap | Interview
Rattawut Lapcharoensap & Yuka Igarashi
‘Sometimes all a story needs is an interesting, clearly defined confusion.’
A Dynasty of Album Cover Art
Lemi Ghariokwu
‘The music is as powerful as it gets and beneath his knife-edge, cutting sarcasm, Fela’s voice rages.’
Teachers
Sandy Tolan
‘They came from Europe, Palestine and America, drawn by the story of Ramzi and Al Kamandjâti, by the young traveller’s spirit of adventure, and by the desire to use their musical talents for work that could make a difference in the world.’
A Brief History of a Musical Failure
Catherine Tice
‘At the end of the piece, there was silence, followed by a sudden thunder of feet and bows on the stands. A thrilling noise.’
Success
Adriana Lisboa
‘They hadn’t tried them yet but the girls both knew, from the adverts, that Hollywood cigarettes were awesome.’
Lullaby
Mary Ruefle
‘I wasn’t bored, I was relaxed, and, I suppose, happy (I’ve never been able to figure out how happiness feels).’
Helen Mort | Interview
Helen Mort & Rachael Allen
‘I think there’s something seductive and liberating about the way you can create shadowy characters in a poem.’
Passing Place
Helen Mort
‘Stall here and let the world / go past, the way / the world well might / on heather-coloured days like this,’
Ellen Bryant Voigt | Interview
Ellen Bryant Voigt & Rachael Allen
‘I don’t think of music and narrative as being mutually exclusive – some of my poems ARE narrative, and are as ‘sound-driven’ as the lyrics.’
Mario Levrero | Best Untranslated Writers
Juan Pablo Villalobos
‘I knew he was a ‘strange’ writer, unclassifiable, with a boundless imagination, who was creating one of the most intriguing, thought-provoking bodies of work in the Spanish language.’
Juan Pablo Villalobos | Podcast
Juan Pablo Villalobos & Rachael Allen
Juan Pablo Villalobos on class struggle in Mexico, parodying Mexican identity and the difficulty of translation.
Héctor Abad | First Sentence
Héctor Abad
‘Ever since this happened to me, I haven’t really believed in free will.’
Searching for Pavese
Alejandro Zambra
‘Something’s gone awry with this article. My intention was to remember, in his birthplace, a writer I admire, and it’s clear that my admiration has waned.’
Oline Stig | Best Untranslated Writers
Lina Wolff
‘Oline Stig doesn’t blindly obey the narrow logic of the dramatic curve, and she lets the story branch where it is necessary. The end is surprising and, so to say, out of tune in a liberating way.’
Eleanor Catton | Podcast
Eleanor Catton & Anne Meadows
Anne Meadows talks to Eleanor Catton about opium and gold, whether a good author can also be a sadist and what it means to be a New Zealand writer today.
Sami Said | Best Untranslated Writers
Stephan Mendel-Enk
‘Frustrated reporters have described him whistling rather than answering their questions and giving most of the credit for the books to someone named Oscar. The only thing that seems certain about him is that he’ll continue to write.’
David Searcy | First Sentence
David Searcy
‘When I was a kid, my family doctor, right through high school, was this wonderful, funny guy with a little Boston Blackie moustache who looked a lot like Burgess Meredith.’
Two Poems
Joe Wenderoth
‘At first you treat him as a nobility – / a miraculous figure(head) / with no real office. / Then he dies.’
Miroslav Penkov | First Sentence
Miroslav Penkov
‘It was an old woman’s racism that inspired the first line of ‘Blood Money’.’
Cristhiano Aguiar | On Tour
Cristhiano Aguiar
‘Rabbits running across a campus and a beer named Hobgoblin: these are two of the topics noted in my small travel notebook.’
Chupa Globo (Globo Sucks)
Sophie Lewis
‘Carnival by stealth: ticketless, leaderless and limitless, a surge of feeling independent of schools, parties, king or queen; a true subversion of the status quo.’
Lina Wolff | Podcast
Lina Wolff & Saskia Vogel
Lina Wolff on Dante, the artistic temperament and the tension she feels between a ‘Spanishness’ and ‘Swedishness’ when writing.
Tao Lin | Interview
Tao Lin & Yuka Igarashi
Yuka Igarashi talks to Tao Lin about sense of place within the novel Taipei, his online presence and abstraction and metaphor in his writing.
Tao Lin | On Tour
Tao Lin
‘The editor of the Oregonian’s books section (Powell’s employees later confirmed to me that it was him, but they could be wrong) attended, I think, and asked in what sounded to me like an accusatory, non-curious voice if I was on drugs.’
Sonia Faleiro | Podcast
Sonia Faleiro
Sonia Faleiro on marginalized narratives, her time as a reporter and how gender influences her work.
A Letter From Wales
Cynan Jones
‘Believe me – it will be impossible for you not to wonder – when I vow I am entirely sane.’
The Bridge Over Shuto Expressway No. 1
Alex Preston
‘Hiro Ōe wakes earlier now that he has the apartment to himself.’
The Third Pole
Gavin Francis
‘I came to the Himalayas not because of a dream of mountains or of animals, but because of a map.’
What Happened to Us
Humera Afridi
‘Trouble. There’s always trouble of some kind or other bringing the city to a standstill.’
Robert Macfarlane | Podcast
Robert Macfarlane & Rachael Allen
‘When you're dealing with a geological context, its age exceeds your knowing, exceeds your comprehension. Deep time is dizzying and vertiginous.’
Notes from Uzbekistan
Chinelo Okparanta
‘The cultural presentations of the students – that juxtaposition of old and new world, of tradition and modernity.’
Charles Simic | Interview
Charles Simic & Rachael Allen
Charles Simic is one of today's most prolific poets. He speaks with poetry editor Rachael Allen about poetic movements, simple dishes and tragicomedy.
The Captain
Rattawut Lapcharoensap
‘I was with Dora. We were in love. Things were cheap and plentiful and the money from the insurance was going to last us forever.’
