Deep Vellum at AWP, Literary Death Match in Dallas, and More
AWP 2015 is upon us!
Greetings from Minneapolis, where I’ve come to serenade the assembled #AWP15 masses with the siren song of translation. If you’re in town, join me at Table #1527, which Deep Vellum is sharing with the always-rad Anomalous Press which are run by Erica, who is also running the American Literary Translators Association these days, which was, as some Dallasites may know, founded at UT-Dallas once upon a time, and was based at that university in the fair city I call home until right around the point I moved to town. Funny how life works. Also, Anomalous is publishing books that are primarily translation-minded (with a couple translations!!), but so far in English, but what’s cool about that is that Anomalous publishes the types of books I wish more American writers would write. And also because they’re publishing Dallas’ very own A. Kendra Greene‘s Anatomy of a Museum about the Reykjavik Phallalogical Museum (and featuring a blurb from our very own Jón Gnarr!); and sometime in the next year they’ll publish our own marketing director/dear dear friend Scott Esposito‘s Transgender Triptych (and not to mention a new book from Duke professor/insanely amazing poet Nathaniel Mackey!). Good books, good people. It’s our first AWP, but I’m so happy to share it with such a forward-thinking press just outside of the normal circle of indie publishers I run with, and that is what it is all about: new friends, new readers, new writers, new translators, expanding the circle ever-outward, towards ever-more awesome heights.
Friday is Deep Vellum’s big day at AWP: join us at our table (#1527) at 3pm for Jón Gnarr & his translator (and poet in his own right!) Lytton Smith signing copies of The Indian!!!
Join Deep Vellum as we partner with Anomalous Press and some of our other indie publishing friends for our off-site event Friday night at Gamut Gallery, only two blocks from the convention center. There will be lots of free food, drinks on-hand, and Jón Gnarr & Lytton Smith will be there to read & sign & blow your everlovin’ minds.
And in Dallas this week!!! Don’t forget while I’m gone that LITERARY DEATH MATCH is coming to town for the first time in five years!! This one features Ben Fountain, Merritt Tierce, Tim Rogers, Will Clarke, J. Suzanne Frank, Alice Laussade, and Joaquin Zihuatanejo all reading, bantering, being the best, and it’s all going down at the beautiful, amazing, impeccably-well-programmed Texas Theatre. Tickets are $8 in advance (including fees! $8 flat!) and $10 at the door.
The 2014 VIDA (Women in Literary Arts) count is up, and with it a call to action for every reader, writer, editor, publisher, human being on what we can all do to change the game when it comes to the massive gender disparity in every corner of the literary world. If you take away one thing from the VIDA count, take away this handout of Things You Can Do Right Now to Advance Women’s Writing—it is a must-read:.
When I’m back from Minneapolis, you’ll catch me at the Dallas International Film Festival, which has really outdone itself in its programming this year. Two translation-related movies that I absolutely won’t miss are screening at the festival: NOWITZKI: The Perfect Shot, a German documentary on one of the all-time great basketball players, the Dallas Mavericks‘ greatest franchise player, the Big German, 2011 NBA Champion, #7 all-time leading scorer in the NBA (and climbing), Dirk Nowitzki; and The Look of Silence, the follow-up documentary to the mind-blowing and seminal The Act of Killing by director Joshua Oppenheimer, this one follows the victims of the “anti-Communist” purges that led to the massacre of over a million Indonesians around the time of Suharto’s rise to power in 1965—and this fall we are publishing a book that complements Oppenheimer’s documentaries, Home by Leila S. Chudori, translated from the Indonesian by John H. McGlynn, that follows those who fled into exile to flee these purges and those who stayed behind from 1965-1998 (when Suharto was ousted from power), and we’ve asked Joshua Oppenheimer to provide an introduction to the book, and he’s reading the text now.
And next week you can catch Deep Vellum on Wednesday night hanging out with PEN Texas as they present the great Ecuadorian poet Santiago Vizcaíno & his translator Alexis Levitin reading & in discussion at The Wild Detectives. The event starts at 7:30pm and is free.
From Minneapolis to Dallas, the road goes on forever, and the party never ends.