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Africa and the World
I’ve been asked very loosely to think about the relationship of African writers and Africa at large to American writing. An enormous topic, of course, but I’ll offer a… More
The Way We Love Now: Elif Shafak
I will talk about how I interpret the relationship between sexuality and fiction writing and the relationship between sexuality and the fiction writer. Most of my remarks will be… More
The Way We Love Now: Peter Stamm
I wanted to talk about love in Switzerland, but the country is so small, there’s really not much to say. Only one detail: In Swiss-German “love” is not a… More
Africa and the World: Writers at Home and Away
ACHMAT DANGOR: History. We all have our stories.Forty years ago, at the eager age of sixteen, I had to appear before a race-classification board in Pretoria, South Africa, because… More
International Noir: Breaking Out of Crime Time
If you think this is complexity—no, this is Mexican realism. This is a game; this is Walt Disney for Mexicans. Mexican reality is more horrible—they take our kidneys every… More
Quixote at 400
Actually, Don Quixote was published in the same year as the story of that other mad old man, King Lear, so it was a great year for mad old… More
The Way We Love Now
As I was thinking about this, I began, as one obviously would, to think about the Pope. I have the TV on in my writing room and there was… More
Francois Bizot: Confronting the Worst: Writing and Catastrophe
In 1971, I was caught by a revolutionary communist in Cambodia. I was chained and condemned to death and before that, interrogated by a young man who asked me… More
Elena Poniatowska: Confronting the Worst: Writing and Catastrophe
I’m going to read a testimony from a person who helped during the 1985 earthquake in Mexico. It’s a young boy, about eighteen:We reached the baseball park in the… More
Crossover Artists: Writing in Another Language
SHAN SA: I apologize, first of all, for my accent. It’s a really horrible, Chinese-French accent because I’m Chinese and I’m living in Paris now and I’m writing in… More
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