Photo by Peter Tandlund / Flickr
A Bosnian refugee of war now living, teaching, and writing in Stockholm considers the Swedish Academy’s selection for the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature,…
Cultural Cross Sections
October 17, 2019
October 15, 2019Diane Zephier / Courtesy of the author There are maps of “Points of Interest” or landmarks tourists visit every summer dotted across the prairies of Sioux country. Landmarks on maps detail wh…
October 14, 2019Photo: Johnny Silvercloud / Flickr Seeking to understand the fascination with America and cowboys that courses through a Scottish subculture, a Canadian writer joins a gun club for its weekly p…
October 10, 2019Elder Crosslin Smith holds heirloom Cherokee corn (selu) grown by tribal staff for a group activity on traditional cooking / Photo by Nancy Rackliff For Indigenous peoples, the political is e…
October 8, 2019The film ends where it all begins: like a fable that devours its own tail in order to explain how we always return to our origins. Using this age-old though useful device, Pedro Almodóvar has achie…
October 3, 2019Photo by Mimi Di Cianni on Unsplash There is a Red Barn Ice Cream shop near Watertown in upstate New York. There, in the middle of nowhere, was ice cream with real fruit, whole strawberries i…
September 19, 2019Photo by Diego Martin / Flickr The 2018 National Hispanic Hero Award winner reflects back on his education and his grandmother’s “Nunca me . . .” sayings, finding that, over…
July 23, 2019A writer travels from Chicago to a residency in rural Malaysia, where part of her novel-in-progress is set. While encountering the many living creatures who surround her and making progress on h…
July 10, 2019Children’s choir at the 2014 La Matanza Book Fair / Photo by Mauro Rico / Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación / Flickr When good engineers or scientists emigrate, they are able to continue…
June 11, 2019Paulo Valdivieso, Porto das Hortas / Flickr Portugal was rocked earlier this year by the news that one of the most popular poems attributed to one of the nation’s greatest modern poets, Sophi…
May 23, 2019Mmakgosi Anita Tau (left) and Mandisa Mabuthoe (center) work with their mentor, TJ Dema (International Writing Program fall resident, 2012), all from Botswana, at their inaugural mentorship sessi…
May 8, 2019Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash May 8, 2019 to Daniel Simon, Editor in Chief, World Literature Today Dear Daniel, It is with great pleasure that I write these words today to thank…
May 7, 2019Tour guide at the Queen Mine in Bisbee / Photo by Scott Durgan / Flickr Last summer, I spent July and part of August in a straw-bale house in Cochise County, less than half an hour north of B…
May 2, 2019Photo: Blake Weyland / Unsplash In this excerpt from Romanian political theorist and feminist philosopher Mihaela Miroiu’s memoir, Miroiu looks back to her early days in a…
April 16, 2019Kuala Lumpur / Photo by Ishan @seefromthesky Although the world has opened up for Malaysian glocal writers in the past fifteen years, they still face the demon of self-censorship.…
March 21, 2019Pierre and Marie Cayol To know Pierre and Marie Cayol is to enter an immediate circle of friendship that reaches far and wide and represents a towering monument of achievements, ties, and eve…
February 7, 2019Happy Lunar New Year! Lunar New Year, also known as Chinese New Year, is a festival that celebrates the beginning of the new year based on the lunar calendar. It is arguably the most important holida…
January 24, 2019Humberto Ak’abal in 2013 / Courtesy of LiteraturhausSalzburg For nearly a decade I ran a visiting writers series at a liberal arts university in Indiana. The series was very well endowed, whi…
January 3, 2019As 2018 drew to an end, my thoughts increasingly turned to the Eritrean writer Ribka Sibhatu, the first author I decided to work on when I took up literary translation professionally in 2010. Sibhat…
December 20, 2018“Yellow Dust,” Tokyo, 2009 / Photo by OiMax / Flickr In this short essay, one of Japan’s early avant-garde writers turns his attention to dust, asking, “Just what kind of game are you playing?…
November 6, 2018A still from Landscape in the Mist, directed by Theo Angelopoulos / Courtesy of IMDBThe BBC has in the past conducted cinematic surveys to determine the top 100 American films ever made, the…
November 5, 2018Tankred Dorst / Courtesy Der Tagesspiegel / HR Schulz Tankred Dorst (1925–2017) was one of the most performed German/European dramatists of the last century, and his plays are…
October 10, 2018“I must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”—Samuel Beckett / Photo by paolobarzman Over the last five years, the Ministry of Information in Kuwait has banned thousands of books. Predictable reac…
September 13, 2018Hélène Dorion / Photo by Maxime G. Delisle - Background photo by Alexas_Photos / PixabayOne of the major themes throughout Quebecois writer Hélène Dorion’s work is her focus on the relationship betwee…
September 6, 2018Falcon photo courtesy of Quentin Dr / UnsplashThe Poem to the PoetErase again! Farther lead this rhythmTo capture the cloud and the ploughshare,Slow is the night that looks through y…
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Kwame Dawes courtesy of Blue Flower Arts
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WLT’s executive director, editors, and staff all deeply mourn the passing of David L. Boren, who died on February 20, 2025. Nick Hathaway, who…
. . . I sleep early, risebefore daylight, waitwith patient stuporthe coming gray light. . . I move slowly,surreptitiously — ananimal hungry to find…
