NEWS & EVENTS • NEW TITLES • CATALOG • ABOUT US • CONTACT • PROFESSORS • LINKS • NEWSLETTER

YOEL HOFFMANN

"The Israeli avant-garde genius -- in English at last." -Forward

"What Hoffmann has achieved here is a kind of magic." - Chicago Tribune

"[A] further persuasive illustration of the genius of one of Israel's finest contemporary writers." - Kirkus Reviews

"Exquisite shards of memories, crystallized in language." -Review of Contemporary Fiction

"Less a novel than a loosely woven series of impressionistic prose poems." - Publishers Weekly

"Hoffmann is one of the most precious voices in Israel's contemporary literature." - Amos Oz

MORE

PEN World Voices Festival April 29 - May 4

New Directions is happy to announce that some of our writers, translators, and editors will be participating in the the fourth annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. This year's theme, Public Lives/Private Lives could hardly be more timely. How do we draw a line between our private and public selves? When must we tell private stories for the public good? How, as readers, writers, and citizens, do we confront threats to our privacy? What is still considered private in the Internet age? Do we need to redefine the meaning of public and private in the 21st century? The writers in this year's Festival will mine this rich theme in a variety of literary conversations, panels, readings, and performances. New Directions-related participants include:

Susan Bernofsky, translator:  A Tribute to Robert Walser With: Deborah Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eugenides, Wayne Koestenbaum, and Michael Krueger. Location: Gilder Lehrman Hall, The Morgan Library & Museum: 225 Madison Ave. When: Saturday, May 3rd @ 4 p.m. Susan Bernofsky is the recipient of a 2005 PEN Translation Fund Award for her translation of Jenny Erpenbeck's The Old Child & Other Stories. She has also translated Yoko Tawada's Where Europe Begins and Robert Walser's The Assistant, all published by New Directions.

Coral Bracho, poet: Readings: Public Lives/Private Lives With: Peter Esterhazy, Rian Malan, Ian McEwan, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Annie Proulx, Evelyn Schlag, A.B. Yehoshua; introduced by Salman Rushdie. Location: The Town Hall: 123 West 43rd St. When: Wednesday, April 30th @ 8 p.m.   Readings from Europe and Mexico With: Arnon Grunberg, Andres Ibanez, Carme Riera, and P.F. Thomese. Location: Instituto Cervantes New York: 211-215 East 49th St. When: Friday, May 2nd @ 1 p.m. Bilingual Reading and Conversation With: Forrest Gander. Location: NYPL Mulberry Street Branch: 10 Jersey St. When: Saturday, May 3rd @ 2 p.m. Coral Bracho was born in Mexico City. She has published eight books of poetry, including the groundbreaking El Ser Que Va a Morir (1982) which changed the course of Mexican poetry. Among her grants and prizes are the Aguascalientes National Poetry Prize, the Xavier Villaurrutia Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in translation in American Poetry Review, Bomb, Conjunctions, and The Nation, and her new book Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems is available from New Directions (April 2008).

Horacio Castellanos Moya, writer: Exile With: Nuruddin Farah, Chenjerai Hove; moderated by Donald Faulkner. Location: Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center, University at Albany, Uptown Campus: 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY. When: Tuesday, April 29th @ 8 p.m. Personal Narrative and Public Consciousness With: Carmen Boullosa Location: Segal Theater, CUNY Graduate Center: 365 Fifth Ave When: Thursday, May 1st @ 3 p.m. The Art of Failure With: Paul Holdengraeber, Fatima Naqvi, and Dale Peck; moderated by Jonathan Taylor. Location: Austrian Cultural Forum: 11 East 52nd St. When: Thursday, May 1st @ 7 p.m. Horacio Castellanos Moya was born in 1957 in Honduras and grew up in El Salvador. Author of eight novels, he worked for twelve years as a journalist in Mexico and has lived in Costa Rica, Canada, Guatemala, Spain, and Germany under the auspices of the Frankfurt International Book Fair. His novels have been translated into French, German, Italian, and Portuguese. The English translation of Senselessness will be published by New Directions in May 2008. He currently resides in the U.S. as writer-in-residence of City of Asylum/Pittsburgh.

Barbara Epler, Editor-in-Chief of New Directions:   Five Years of the PEN Translation Fund: A Celebration With: Esther Allen, Edwin Frank, Wen Huang, Sarah Khalili, Idra Novey, Christopher Southward, Eliot Weinberger, and others. Location: Segal Theater, CUNY Graduate Center: 365 Fifth Ave. When: Wednesday, April 30th @ 1 p.m.

Forrest Gander, poet & translator: The Art of Translation With: Fanny Howe, Stephanie Sandler, and Genya Turovskaya; introduced by Eliot Weinberger. Location: Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House of NYU: 58 West 10th St. When: Saturday, May 3rd @ 4 p.m. Bilingual Reading and Conversation With: Coral Bracho. Location: NYPL Mulberry Street Branch: 10 Jersey St. When: Saturday, May 3rd @ 2 p.m. Forrest Gander's books include Eye Against Eye, Science and Steepleflower, and Torn Awake (New Directions), A Faithful Existence (essays, Shoemaker & Hoard) and the forthcoming novel, As a Friend (New Directions, 2008). His translations include No Shelter: Selected Poems of Pura Lopez Colome (Graywolf), and (with Kent Johnson) two books by Jaime Saenz, The Night and Immanent Visitor, which was a finalist for the 2003 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Gander's translations of Coral Bracho's poems, Firefly Under the Tongue, is out this month from New Directions. Gander lives in Rhode Island with poet C.D. Wright and their son. As Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Brown University, he teaches courses on phenomenology and poetics, Asian-American poetries, and translation.

Joyce Carol Oates, writer:  The Advantages of Literature for Life and Death. With: Umberto Eco; introduced by Francine Prose. Location: The Great Hall at Cooper Union: 7 East 7th St. When: Sunday, May 4th @ 6:30 p.m.  Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. Her novel, The Rise of Life on Earth was published by New Directions in 1991. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and since 1978 has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2003 she received the Common Wealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature and the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement.

Eliot Weinberger, writer:  Five Years of the PEN Translation Fund: A Celebration With: Barbara Epler, Esther Allen, Edwin Frank, Wen Huang, Sarah Khalili, Idra Novey, Christopher Southward, and others. Location: Segal Theater, CUNY Graduate Center: 365 Fifth Ave. When: Wednesday, April 30th @ 1 p.m.   Private Lives, Public Lives, Other Lives, New Lives With: Ingo Schulze Location: Goethe-Institut New York: 1014 Fifth Ave. When: Saturday, May 3rd @ 1 p.m.   The Art of Translation With: Forrest Gander, Fanny Howe, Stephanie Sandler, and Genya Turovskaya. Location: Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House of NYU, 58 West 10th St. When: Saturday, May 3rd @ 4 p.m. Eliot Weinberger is an American writer, translator, and editor. He was born in New York City in 1949. He is the main translator of Octavio Paz into English, work for which he received the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest award the Mexican government bestows on foreign nationals. Weinberger's other honors include the National Book Critics Circle prize for Criticism in 1999 for his edition of Jorge Luis Borges' Selected Non-Fictions, and PEN's first Gregory Kolovakos Award in 1992 for promoting Hispanic literature in the United States. He is also the translator of Bei Dao's Unlock (with Iona Man-Cheong). His books of prose include Muhammad, What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles, and Karmic Traces: 1993-1999. He is the editor of World Beat: International Poetry Now from New Directions and The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry. His most recent book of essays, An Elemental Thing, was published in May 2007.

Jeffrey Yang, editor & translator: Circumference Celebrates Poetry in Translation With: Brian Henry, Christina Svendsen, and special guests. Location: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe: 126 Crosby St. When: Tuesday, April 29 @ 7 p.m. Jeffrey Yang is poetry editor of New Directions. His translation of Su Shi's East Slope is published by Ugly Duckling Presse; and a book of poems, An Aquarium, will be published by Graywolf Press in Fall 2008.

Alexander Kluge Wins LIfetime Achievement Award

The highly acclaimed German film director and New Directions author Alexander Kluge has won a honorary Lola award for Lifetime Achievement. The Lolas (the German equivalent to the Oscars) are awarded by the German Film Academy. Kluge is renowned in Germany as a filmmaker who played a central role in the emergence of New German Cinema, as well as an author of numerous theoretical and literary works and the head of a television production company for which he regularly conducts interviews aired on German television. His two books available in English from New Directions are The Devil's Blind Spot and, most recently, Cinema Stories. Kluge's next project is a film adaptation of Marx's Kapital, in collaboration with Tom Tykwer, Durs Gruenbein, and Peter Sloterdijk, projected to be 420 minutes long, and bearing the working title "Nachrichten aus der ideologischen Antike" - News from ideological antiquity.

Gary Snyder Wins 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize

New Directions would also like to congratulate Gary Snyder, the winner of the 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, which was announced on April 29. Established in 1986 and presented annually by the Poetry Foundation, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets, and at $100,000 it is one of the nation's largest literary honors. The prize will be presented to Snyder in Chicago on Thursday, May 29.

Snyder, who turns 78 in May, is the author of seven books published by New Directions, including Regarding Wave, Back Country, and Turtle Island, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1975. He is also included, as a translator, in The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry.

"Gary Snyder is in essence a contemporary devotional poet, though he is not devoted to any one god or way of being so much as to Being itself," Christian Wiman, chair of the selection committee, said in a statement Tuesday. "His poetry is a testament to the sacredness of the natural world and our relation to it, and a prophecy of what we stand to lose if we forget that relation."

Coral Bracho and Forrest Gander to Read at NYPL

Coral Bracho and her translator Forrest Gander read from and discuss the newly-published Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems at the New York Public Library's Mulberry Street Branch on Saturday, May 3rd, at 2:00 pm. Credited with changing the course of contemporary Mexican poetry, Bracho remains one of her country's most influential poets. Firefly Under the Tongue is Bracho's first full-length collection to appear in English. The event is co-sponsored by Poets House, New Directions and PEN World Voices. The Library is located at 10 Jersey Street (bet. Lafayette and Mulberry, one block south of Houston Street); admission is free.

Howe Reading in Darien, CT; Panel in Tuscon, AZ

Susan Howe will be reading in Darien, Connecticut, at the Darien Library at 3.pm. on Sunday, May 4th. A reception will follow the reading, which is free and open to the public. The reading is sponsored by the Poet's Voice, a consortium of Fairfield County public libraries, and supported by the Horace E. Manacher Poetry Fund and the Annual Campaign. Howe is the author of seven books published by ND, including the recent Souls of the Labadie Tract and the newly re-issued My Emily Dickinson.

Howe will also take part in a panel, "Conceptual Poetry and its Others," which will be hosted by the University of Arizona Poetry Center in Tucson, Arizona on May 29-31. The symposium will explore and discuss the cutting-edge in contemporary avant-garde poetry. In addition to a keynote address with renowned poetry critic Marjorie Perloff, there will be lectures, classes, panel and roundtable discussions, and literary presentations featuring Caroline Bergvall, Charles Bernstein, Christian Boek, Craig Dworkin, Peter Gizzi, Kenneth Goldsmith, Tracie Morris and Cole Swensen. Registration costs are $105 general admission and $60 for (non-resident) student admission. For more information, please contact Renee Angle, 520.626.3765 or write poetry@email.arizona.edu.

Eva Aridjis's The Favor Debuts in New York

Eva Aridjis, the daughter of poet Homero Aridjis, will have her English-language feature film directorial debut, The Favor, open this Friday at select theaters.Written and directed by Eva Aridjis, The Favor is a deeply emotional tale of how far we will go for the ones we love, starring Tony-Award winning actor Frank Wood and Ryan Donowho. The film will open at the following theaters:

MAY 2nd - MAY 8th NEW YORK - THE QUAD CINEMA, 34 West 13th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues). Call (212) 255-8800 for showtimes.

MAY 2nd - MAY 8th LOS ANGELES - LAEMMLE'S GRANDE 4-PLEX, 345 S. Figueroa St. Call (213) 617-0268 for showtimes.

MAY 9th- MAY 11th SAN FRANCISCO - THE RED VIC, 1727 Haight Street, between Cole and Shrader, just a block and a half east from Golden Gate Park. Call (415) 668-3994 for showtimes.

For more information, please visit the film's myspace site: www.myspace.com/thefavorthefilm. Eva Aridjis's father, Homero Aridjis, is a poet whose works include Eyes to See Otherwise (Ojos De Otro Mira), which is published in a bilingual Spanish/English edition by New Directions.

Smart People Read WIlliam Carlos WIlliams

If you were a bitter college literature professor (played by Dennis Quaid) still mourning the long-ago death of his wife, and you finally resolved to do something about it by romancing a nurse (and former student) played by Sarah Jessica Parker, what book would you reach to for assistance? The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, of course.

New Directions was excited to see the book used as a prop in Smart People. It got plenty of face time, and it even shows up in the trailer.

Pound Opera to be Published by Second Evening Art

New Directions is pleased to announce the publication -- by Second Evening Art -- of Ezra Pound's opera Le Testament "Paroles de Villon." The volume contains both the score for the 1926 "Salle Pleyel" concert excerpts and the final version of 1933, both composed by Pound. Editors Robert Hughes and Margaret Fisher, have also published Pound's operas Cavalcanti and Collis O Heliconii, and Pound's violin pieces. Robert Hughes pioneered the recovery of Pound's music with the performance (and Fantasy recording) of Le Testament in 1972. In related news, Margaret Fisher has just won the Paul Mellon Post-Doctoral Rome Prize (a year's residence at the American Academy in Rome) to research Futurist involvement in early Italian Radio.

Ferlinghetti's Art to be Exhibited in Rome

An exhibition of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's artwork will be shown at the Teatro India, an official venue of the city of Rome, on May 16. The show is provocatively entitled "Italian Ladies' Underwear." The next night, May 17, Mr. Ferlinghetti will give a bilingual reading at the Teatro Tor Bella Monaco.

The poet and artist Lawrence Ferlinghetti is the author of A Coney Island of the Mind, one of the best-selling poetry books of the twentieth century, recently re-issued in a brand-new 50th-anniversary edition with a CD of Mr. Ferlinghetti reading, and also available in a signed, slipcased limited edition. Mr. Ferlinghetti is also the author of 11 other books currently in print with ND, including the recent Poetry as Insurgent Art, as well as the founder of City Lights Books, San Francisco's premier independent bookstore and highly acclaimed publisher.

McClure and Manzarek Perform in SF

On Wednesday, May 7, original Beat icon Michael McClure, who penned Janis Joplin's immortal "Mercedes Benz," and Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer who created one of rock's most memorable instrumental lines (think "Light My Fire"), join forces with saxophonist George Brooks (Summit, Bombay Jazz, Etta James), bassist Rob Wasserman (Lou Reed, Aaron Neville, Rickey Lee Jones), and drummer Jay Lane (Charlie Hunter, Bob Weir) for two shows (8 p.m. and 10 p.m.) of sophisticated anti-politics, elegant improvisation, American haiku, and jazz-drenched dharma boogie. The show is at Yoshi's, at 1330 Filmore St., San Francisco. Call 415-655-5600 for more information, or click here for tickets ($18 & $22).

Trailer released for Nickel Mountain

Last month, New Directions re-issued John Gardner's bestselling, seminal work, Nickel Mountain. Gardner's son, filmmaker Joel Gardner, is currently working on a documentary about his father. He and his wife Cate Camp have provided New Directions with a preview trailer for the novel, which can be seen here.

ND Authors on the Air with "Cross-Cultural Poetics"

If you've missed the chance to see ND poets reading in person, you can catch up with many of them online, thanks to "Cross-Cultural Poetics," a radio show hosted by Leonard Schwartz and produced in the studios of KAOS-FM at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. The online archive at PENNsound includes interviews with too many ND poets and translators to count (but if anyone does arrive at an exact number, please let us know). They include Robert Creeley, Nathaniel Mackey, Michael Palmer, Kamau Brathwaite, Thalia Field, Jerome Rothenberg, Rosmarie Waldrop, Aharon Shabtai, Forrest Gander, Richard Sieburth . . . as well as a recent interview with ND editor Declan Spring, discussing the work of Can Xue. If that's not enough, there are also interviews with plenty of non-ND poets to help you occupy a few lazy summer afternoons.