The items below were posted to the original IWP website as "happenings" in 2023.
Among the newly inducted fellows of the Royal Society of Literature are alums Lorna Goodison and Han Kang, as well as IWP’s 2023 Ida Beam honoree Yiyun Li.
In the most recent LARB, a thoughtful posthumous review appears of Hana Andronikova’s small but significant body of work.
Just completed: “Sense of Belonging,” a bilingual Iowa City + Paris-based podcast series commissioned by Walid Rachedi and produced by NFW grad students in both cities, with support of the US Embassy in Paris.
Word has just reached us of the sudden death, in his hometown Gdańsk, of the novelist, poet, essayist, and playwright Paweł Huelle. RIP.
Samuel Kolawole’s first novel, The Road to the Salt Sea, is announced for a July 2024 release.
“I regret that poems can’t serve as witnesses in military tribunals; they can only testify in the court of history,” writes Iya Kiva in an essay for the project “War Is… Ukrainian Writers on Living Through Catastrophe.”
Congratulations to novelists Mansoura Ez-Eldin and Taleb Al-Refai for placing on the 2023 finalist list of the prestigious Prix de la littérature arabe.
On the 2023 longlist for the Sheikh Zayed Prize (Children’s Literature) is Estabraq Ahmad.
A recent essay appeared on Scroll.in about the distinguished poet Jayanta Mahapatra as a reader.
One of the two 2023-4 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prizes for the Translation of Japanese Literature has been awarded to our UI colleague, Associate Professor Kendall Heitzman, for his translation of the story collection Nails and Eyes by IWP alum Kaori Fujino. Congratulations to both!
Halloween is the release day of Edward Carey’s stage-and-gore novel Edith Holler.
An interview with alum Ma Thida in her role as the current Chair of the PEN Writers in Prison Committee has appeared on The First Person Substack.
Amazingly, Pilar Quintana aces yet another National Book Award spot—this time as a 2023 Translated Literature finalist, for The Abyss, translated by Lisa Dillman.
It is with genuine sorrow that we are learning of the sudden death of our alum, collaborator, and friend, the Syrian novelist Khaled Khalifa. Lina Sinjab’s short film about him is one homage among many thoughtful recollections. RIP.
The always-interesting Publishing Perspectives PRC bestseller list is currently topped by Chi Zijian, with recurrent appearances by Yu Hua and, inevitably, Mo Yan.
...and the winner of Argentine’s 2023 Premio de novela Sara Gallardo is Derroche [Waste] by Maria Sonia Cristoff.
Yamila Bêgné and María Sonia Cristoff are among the finalists for the 2023 Premio Nacional de Novela Sara Gallardo, awarded by Argentine’s Ministry of Culture.
On the just-out longlist of the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature are Khaled Khalifa’s No One Prayed Over Their Graves (trs. Leri Price, from the Arabic) and Pilar Quintana’s Abyss (trs. Lisa Dillman, from the Spanish).
Featured in Interlink’s “Celebrating Women in Translation Month”: novels in translation by alum and colleague Iman Humaydan and “the Virginia Wolf of Palestinian literature” Sahar Khalifeh.
A giant of Indian English poetry, the author, translator, and scholar Jayanta Mahapatra, passed away on August 27, 2023. Here is a lovely interview with him by poet Sridala Swami.
Poet and scholar Mohammad Rafiq died unexpectedly in Bangladesh. Some of his poems were essential reading among those resisting the 1980s military dictatorship. R.I.P.
“Disrupting Home” is the 2023 theme of the upcoming Nairobi-based Macombo Literary Festival, co-organized by Yvonne Adhiambo Ouwuor.
“Quiet Night” by Fujino Kaori, translated from the Japanese by Heather D. Davis, appears in the most recent Guernica.
The distinguished Kosovo-born Serbian/Canadian/Jewish novelist and translator David Albahari died in Belgrade on 7/30/2023. R.I.P.
After last year’s Booker winner from IWP ranks, the longlist for the 2023 Booker includes the distinguished Irish novelist Sebastian Barry.
The directorial debut of Luiza Fazio is now up on YouTube.
We regret the passing of professor Kole Omotoso, among the early IWP participants from Africa, described in one obit as “writer, scholar, and pop culture icon. “
In Khaled Khalifa’s latest novel, No One Prayed Over Their Graves , Aleppo as it once was emerges from under the rubble of a century of disasters, natural and man-made..
Among the openers announced for the 2023 Berlin Literaturfestival is 2022 Booker winner Shehan Karunatilaka.
Our colleague, the Ukrainian novelist and human rights activist Victoria Amelina, is hospitalized with critical injuries sustained in the recent Russian missile attack on Kramatorsk.
Open Letters has just published a new edition of the best stories by the recently deceased but still the funniest of all IWP alums, Dubravka Ugrešić.
A cornucopia of IWP alums on WordsWithoutBorders’ June 2023 list of noteworthy new titles in translation: Giovanna Rivero’s debut novel Fresh Dirt from the Grave; Owlish, by Hong Konger Dorothy Tse, and Xu Zechen’s Beijing Sprawl, co-translated by Jeremy Tiang.
A fine (and expertly translated) interview with the distinguished poet Ra Heeduk in Korean Literature Now.
At Canada’s 2023 Atlantic Book Awards, the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award went to El Jones for Abolitionist Intimacies, her cross-genre book about the movement to abolish prisons.
David Anuar’s translations into Spanish of twelve poets from the 2022 residency appear in Iowa Literaria #5.
A re-published, still superb! interview about Pinocchio, fatherhood, and exclamation marks with Edward Carey in the May 2023 issue of Ploughshares.
An excerpt from Laksmi Pamuntjak’s novel Anna dan Partner Anaknya, in Bahasa + English translation, appears in the most recent issue of Words Without Borders.
Two new books, in Afrikaans, by Tom Dreyer: the 2022 story collection Kodachrome and the 2023 poetry collection Nou in Infrarooi (2023).
IWP alums and friends at the 2023 PEN World Voices Festival: Han Kang, Jennifer Croft, Jennifer Shyue.
Work by our recent colleague Lyuba Yakimchuk is included in the collection In the Hour of War: Poetry from Ukraine, to appear from Arrowsmith Press in spring 2023.
Among the 2024 jurors for the prestigious Neustadt Award are IWP alum Fabienne Kanor, the program’s friends and collaborators Jennifer Kwon Dobbs and Sholeh Wolpé and our colleague, the poet Romeo Oriogun.
A conversation at Kyiv Independent between Kate Tsurkan and Viktoria Amelina, colleagues participating in a recent IWP symposium, about researching and documenting Russia’s war crimes in the Ukraine.
The Spring '23 issue of The Dodge, which publishes “eco-writing, works in translation, and writing about animals,” features poetry by Manuel Becerra and Krystyna Dąbrowska.
Sara Baume is among the six 2023 nominees for the lucrative Dylan Thomas Award, designated for English-language writers under 39.
Among the winners of the 2023 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction: “The Mad People of Paris” by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstead.
The special portfolio of Kuwaiti literature in The Common's #25 includes “The Kitchen” by Estabraq Ahmad.
On the list for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction, open to “any woman writing in English, regardless of nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter…for a full-length novel published in the UK between April 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023,” is IWP‘s longstanding colleague Jennifer Croft.
Han Kang’s 2011 novel has just appeared in the US as Greek Lessons, in Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won’s translation.
On his delicious Substack, Etgar Keret cooks up an alphabet soup of fiction, commentary, and video & audio clips.
Ajit Baral, Daisy Rockwell, and Aron Aji are among the board members of SALT, a new initiative at the University of Chicago “to promote English-language translation of literature written in the languages of South Asia.”
On the lively Café Dissensus blog, Umar Timol writes about “reading Camus at 18 and 52.”
We mourn the passing of the distinguished Yugoslav novelist, essayist, and thinker Dubravka Ugrešić, the recipient, among many other honors, of the 2016 Neustadt Prize. It has been a point of pride for us to say that we have hosted her. Rest in peace.
Between 4/4-13, 2023, Mircea Cărtărescu will tour the US to read from his novel Solenoid, in Sean Cotter’s translation.
The just-out March 2023 issue of World Literature Today features pieces on or by alumni Adisa Bašić, Tanure Ojaide, Orhan Pamuk, Alexander Skidan, and Buket Uzuner.
Among its 30 top bestsellers for January 2023, Beijing’s Open Book list features four titles by Yu Hua, and one each by Mo Yan, Chi Zijian, and Feng Jicai.
We note with sadness the death of Dmitry GOLYNKO-VOLFSON, poet, critic, and scholar of Russia's post-avant-gardes.