Open Letter in the NY Times

[BlogSpy]

A few weeks ago, Larry Rohter of the New York Times came up to interview just about everyone involved in Open Letter and the University of Rochester’s Literary Translation programs. The piece he was working on appeared in the paper over the weekend.

So, if you’re curious what we’re doing up here, and if you’re reading this I assume you have to be at least a little curious, the article will give you a good overview of our program and vision.

More...

[Chapman]

...erm...?

[Stewart]

...erm...?

For whatever reason, Three Percent's feed changed at some point this year and I've not been able to remedy it permanently. I've fixed the above.

[Eric]

I'm glad that our BlogSpy (whom Stewart tells us is a robot) has located the latest NYT article by Larry Rohter about Open Letter, the newish publishing venture at the University of Rochester, New York State.

I've met Chad W. Post a few times, both while he was still working for The Dalkey Archive Press and now, as head of this new venture. It is most encouraging that Open Letter publishes nothing but literature, both contemporary and modern classic, in English translation. Mexico and Lithuania unite in being some of the first countries to have an Open Letter author.

I like the idea of a subscription. This means that you not only receive novels from areas of the world you already know something about, but from quite different ones too.

Another important feature of Open Letter is that it links up with the Literary Translation Studies programme at Rochester.

Yet another encouraging sign is that Open Letter will start publishing poetry too from next year. Poetry is often regarded as the eccentric poor relation of the world of literature, as is evidenced here on the WLF, where there is vastly more discussion and reviewing of prose than of poetry, both contemporary and classic.

The Open Letter website is currently at:

Open Letter Books

Forthcoming authors include Jakov Lind (Austria; 1926-2007), Macedonio Fern?ndez (Argentina; 1874-1952), Quim Monz? (Catalonia; born 1952; Catalonia), Alejandro Zambra (Chile; born 1975), Jerzy Pilch (Poland; born 1952) and Andreas Maier (Germany; born 1967).

Previous authors include ones from France, Lithuania, Brazil, the Netherlands and Norway.