One Thousand Scheherazades and Folktales Three Ways

February 4, 2015 · by Stephanie Knapp | in Book Reviews, Storytelling | tagged Alcee Fortier, Animal Tales, Black History Month, Compair Lapin & Bre'r Rabbit, Desegregation in New Orleans, Elizabeth Catlett, Folk Art vs. Academy Art, Laura Plantation, Louisiana folklore, Original versions of fairytales & folktlaes, The Negritude Movement, translated literature | 10 Comments

Alcée Fortier doesn’t get it. He’s spent decades listening, absorbing, and translating a vast collection of stories recounted by the humans living in and around the great estate of Le Petit Versailles built by his grandfather – the first to refine sugar in Louisiana – Valcour Aimé. It is a strange fact that the old […]

Crossing the Divide: New Vessel Press

December 10, 2014 · by Christina Kaylor | in The Story of Books | tagged Authors and book promotion, book marketing, Brooklyn Book Festival, Challenges of translating culture as well as words, e-books, Few books translated in English each year, Frankfort Book Fair, Ko Un, Liana Finck illustrator, Michael Z. Wise, New Vessel Press, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Ross Ufberg, Seamus Heaney Beowulf, stealth translation, translated literature, translation as art and craft | 8 Comments

Someone’s coming from the other world, Hiss of night rain. Someone’s going there now. The two are sure to meet. —Ko Un (from Poetry: The Translation Issue, November 2014) Ko Un’s poem perfectly illustrates to me how translated works help us cross the divide between cultures to get to where “The two are sure to […]