The Blog

AWP Wrap

Erica Mena

Guest blogger Erica Mena is a poet, translator, printmaker, and the co-editor of Discoveries, TIR's forthcoming high school reader. The following is excerpted from her blog, Alluringly Short.

Well, it has been far far too long. I’ve been buried under my thesis (excerpts of which you can read on Words Without Borders here and here) which is inches away from being announce-ably forthcoming in full. So that’s exciting.

Remembering Tom Wegman

Lynne Nugent

We were saddened to hear of the death of TIR cover artist Tom Wegman earlier this month at age 81. A prominent member of the local community, his passing occasioned a remembrance in the Iowa City Press-Citizen. I did not know until then that he had owned a store legendary in town called Things, Things, & Things. Nor did I know that he had become a paraplegic after a 1986 mororcycle accident. I did know that his three covers for TIR in 2003, featuring intricately beaded and insanely colorful roller skates, cowboy boots, and a bug sprayer, have become our most remarked-upon covers to date.

Karen An-Hwei Lee's PHYLA OF JOY

Angela Veronica Wong

Karen An-Hwei Lee’s third collection of poems, Phyla of Joy on Tupelo Press, is, at its heart, a celebration, a request for us to see the beauty around us, and a reminder that even the most minute thing can become miraculous and expansive if we take the time to consider it. In Lee’s poems, we find community, spirituality, and philosophy; we are given exploration of legacy and language. Lee’s first poetry collection, In media res, won the Kathryn A. Morton prize from Sarabande Books and the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Faber First Book Award, and her second book, Ardor, was also published by Tupelo in 2008.

Making World Literature

Russell Scott Valentino

At the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC) for three weeks of working with translators from around the world as they do what they do. It's really not possible to describe this work other than to say it's humble and humbling at the same time.

The last two sessions have focused on translating Cynthia Ozick into Spanish (by Eugenia Vasquez Nacarino), Eduardo Galeano and Rodrigo Rey Rosa into French (by Alexandre Sanchez and Alba Marina Escalon respectively), Evelio Rosero into Dutch (by Jos den Bekker), and Abdellah Taia into English (by Rachael Small).

On Lavender and Longing: André Aciman's ALIBIS

Jericho Parms

In her 1990 A Natural History of the Senses, a grand tour through the luscious world of sight, sound, taste, and touch, Diane Ackerman wrote of the many writers “gloriously attuned” to that oddly powerful sense of smell. Among them, Proust held an affinity for lime-flower tea and madeleines, Woolf ruminated her “parade of city-smells,” Coleridge pondered the aroma of notebooks, Milosz mused on the freshness of his linen closet, Joyce recalled childhood odors of urine and oilcloths, and Flaubert recounted of the fragrance of his lover’s slippers.

AWP Wrap

Remembering Tom Wegman

Karen An-Hwei Lee's PHYLA OF JOY

Making World Literature

On Lavender and Longing: André Aciman's ALIBIS

Pages

Find Us