Friday 17 August 2012

Suggestions, Please

Two projects are looking for suggestions right now. The first is the Dublin literary magazine The Stinging Fly:
Our Summer 2013 issue will showcase literary translation of new and contemporary prose fiction from around the world. In conjunction with Dublin-based literary translation agency, Parkbench Publishing Services, we are now calling for submissions.
So, if you are a translator and you know of a new writer or new writing that you think we should know about, whatever the source language may be, please get in touch.
We are particularly interested in finding/translating short stories, though excerpts from novels and novellas will also be considered.
We hope to include work by new and emerging writers and translators, alongside the work of more established practitioners.
 Exciting, no? There's a form to fill in on the Stinging Fly website linked above.

And secondly, our And Other Stories German-language reading group is collecting suggestions for our next round of reading. We're looking for exciting contemporary novels written by women, to redress AOS's embarrassing gender imbalance. We'll be holding meetings in November, December and January (in Berlin) to discuss each one we pick from the preliminary suggestions, with a view to proposing one of them for translation. There'll probably be a meeting in London too, but you can also comment on the books via the AOS website - and we were pleased to find that a good few people did so during the last round.

I think the last round of discussions went astoundingly well. We had an excellent turn-out of readers in Berlin and some very heated discussions. The upshot was that none of our three books ended up selected for translation, for various reasons. But don't let that stop you joining in the next round - I know we won't!

Update: Oh yeah, contact me or share suggestions in the comments section - thanks.

6 comments:

Helen MacCormac said...

Have you thought about Antje Rávic Strubel "Sturz der Tage in die Nacht"
which was on last year's DBP long list. Amazing language and I loved the way she moved through her story. Interesting fact: she's one of those people who see each letter as a colour. More info at http://www.antjestrubel.de
I think a sample translation is also on its way.

Anonymous said...

Sounds great. Which writer(s) would you choose?

Tania Hershman said...

Hello! I a. Looking for German short story writers and also a translator who might translate my short stories into German, can you help? My email is tania@taniahershman.com. Thank you!

Helen MaccOrmac said...

Having missed the DBP shortlist - I'd like to suggest Dea Loher's Bugatti taucht auf. This is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful book. Three tales tied together with the loss of someone, plus the real life story of an incidental murder and its consequences. I don't know why the DBP chose to publish a bit from the police files section where everything is very sterile, when the book is full of emotional nuggets, and the written word is so much more than dates and events - right up to the end. It would be a sad thing if the DBP were to be reduced to its finalists only... Autobiography - probably not. Possibly true - very likely!
Dea Loher - amazing playwrite, now amazing novelist (first novel) - Plays translated into many, many languages

Helen MacCormac said...

There's even a bit of pre-war Dekadenz which might go down well with English readers - and, of course, there's the car!
H.

kjd said...

Hi Helen,

We've closed the suggestions list now but have taken your first one on board! Thanks so much.