Fence has a new web site. And a new fall issue! My story “The Art of Forgetting” appears online, alongside new work by Ariana Reines, Mary Jo Bang, and Thomas Israel Hopkins.
Appearing Elsewhere
Why doesn’t more foreign fiction make it to the U.S.?
An interesting piece on why more foreign books don’t make it to U.S. shores. The take away? U.S. publishers generally don’t speak foreign languages and can’t readily assess a book’s quality.
Show and Tell
In theory, the author of a great novel is invisible to the reader, letting her stories and characters speak for themselves. In practice, however, it can help for an author to make herself known, as explained by Tim Parks in this essay. Sample quote: “We have the impression that if someone ever did find the full story of his life, we would immediately recognize the person we had in mind.”
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It’s Tuesday. It’s New Releases.
Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk has a new book out in the U.S. today: The Museum of Innocence. Also new on American shelves is the Booker Prize shortlister by Simon Mawer: The Glass Room.
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On Reading Salman Rushdie in India
Literary critic Amitava Kumar has written a personal essay for the Chronicle on his experience reading from Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses at the Jaipur Literary Festival in India, where the work has banned for 23 years. Read The Millions coverage of the festival here.
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City of Asylum
A Pittsburgh-based nonprofit is offering free housing and stipends to “foreign-born scribes who endured imprisonment, or worse, in their home countries.”
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