Cyberflanerie: Software Skills, Food, Summer, the Occult, Consciousness, Umständlich, Supplemental Energy

By C.M. Mayo www.cmmayo.com

David Black talks about the hierarchy of software skills.

The always surprising and knowledgable food historian Rachel Lauden on hamburger and milk.

Mexico Cooks! cooks beans. This is the best Mexican cooking blog, por lejos.
P.S. It doesn't look as nice 'n totalmente auténtico, but I say, go for the Instant Pot.

One of my very favorite bloggers, Pat Dubrava, on "The End of Summer."

Extra-extra crunchaliciously crunchy interview with scholar of the occult Robert Mathiesen.

Jeffrey Mishlove interviews Eban Alexander about consciousness.

Umständlich on the Easy German YouTube channel. They have a powerfully effective concept for learning German, and wow, it is the opposite of Umständlich. I mean, einfach. If you want to brush up on your German, check these out. I started learning Spanish years ago by watching telenovelas (and took classes, too). I wish I'd had something like Easy German videos instead: real people talking, together with a transcript (so I can see what they are actually saying) and the English translation (so I can understand it). I start and stop and replay and also use the speed adjustment. Ganz toll. It's driving my dogs crazy, though.

The German-Texan Heritage Society. I just surfed upon them in looking for the Goethe Institut exam venues in Texas. I was amused to find a blog post about Sitzfleisch. I recall a workshop of yore when novelist Clark Blaise said that Sitzfleisch was the main thing a writer needed.

Oil patch noodling: Gail Tverberg on how supplemental energy puts humans in charge and, an oldie but holycowie: Kunstler interviews Tad Patzek.

What I'm up to is catching up on email, finishing a paper about a cavalry officer in the Indian Wars in Texas, and a heap of reading for my in-progress book on Far West Texas. I'd like to think I'm at the end of that reading but dagnabbit people keep on writing excellent and important books! I'm almost finished with Peter Brannen's The Ends of the World and Steve Brusatte's The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs-- both excellent, so far, and both vital for understanding the deep history of Far West Texas, home of the Permian Basin and stomping grounds of T Rex.

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Top 12 Books Read 2017

Cymru & Comanche: Cyberflanerie

Notes on Wolfgang Schivelbusch's The Railway Journey

Cyberflanerie: El Paso's Secret Tunnels, Gondek's Biography Podcast, Patricia Dubrava on Ursula Le Guin, Susan Coll's Trailer & etc.

El Paso's Secret Tunnels:

Chris Gondek's excellent Biography Podcast is now available on YouTube:



A most extraordinary trailer, for Susan Coll's comic novel The Stager:



Alright then! For Politico, Nicolas Carr explains Twitter

From one of my favorite blogs: Pat Dubrava celebrates Ursula Le Guin

Trailer for T.R. Hummer's After the Afterlife (Nietzsche will be mentioned.)

For my fellow Mexican history nerds: Maximilian's Memoirs (link goes to a post on my Second Empire / French Intervention blog)

Reb Livingston reads "That's Not Butter" (Reb! I miss your blog "Homeschooled by a Crackling Jackal.")

Barbara Allen Hosts Palo Alto's First Poetry Post

Click here, then scroll waaaaaaaaaaaaaay down, for the talk on "Robinson and Una Jeffers: A Life in Letters"

Ye oldie but yumsie by Dmitry Orlov, The Despotism of the Image

GIF: H?

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

REVIEW: James McWilliams' The Pecan: A History of America's Favorite Nut 

A Visit to El Paso's "The Equestrian"

"The Typewriter Manifesto" by Richard Polt, Plus Cyberflanerie on Technology

For the Writing Workshop: John Oliver Simon and Nicanor Parra; Margaret Dulaney's "The Child Door"; Latest Stance on Twitter; Ten Hands

This year I continue to post on Mondays, the second Monday of the month being dedicated to a post for my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. 

# # #

REMEMBERING TWO POETS

John Oliver Simon has passed away, a great loss to the translation and poetry community in California and abroad, especially Mexico. Read his obituary here.

Back in 2008, for Tameme, I published John Oliver Simon's translation of a chapbook by Mexican poet Jorge Fernández Granados, Los fantasmas del Palacio de los Azulejos / Ghosts of the Palace of the Blue Tiles. Read an interview with him about that here.

And over at her blog, Holding the Light, poet and translator Patricia Dubrava remembers Chilean poet Nicanor Parra.

# # #

Some questions for you, dear creative writer:

How would you want your obituary to read?
What creative works would you be most proud of, and why?
Which ones would you not want to leave unfinished, no matter what?

# # #

MARGARET DULANEY'S PODCAST, BOOK, AND LATEST OFFERING, "THE CHILD DOOR"

Playwright, essayist and mystic Margaret Dulaney's monthly podcast, Listen Well, offers her beautifully written and beautifully read personal essays. (Check out her book, To Hear the Forest Sing: Musings on the Divine.) Dulaney's latest offering, "The Child Door," should be of special interest for anyone who might need a nudge for their creative process.

> Click here to listen to Margaret Dulaney's essay, "The Child Door."

# # #

JANE FRIEDMAN KNOWS ALL, TELLS ALL

For those looking to publish, I warmly recommend signing up for Jane Friedman's free and choc-packed-with-valuable information newsletter, Electric Speed.

You can follow her blog, too.

Her new book, The Business of Being a Writer, will be published this month by University of Chicago Press.




# # #

MY CURRENT, CRINGING-IN-THE-FAR-CORNER STANCE ON TWITTER

See "Twitter Is" by C.M. Mayo

As I slog through the backlog of email and, concurrently, contemplate the transcendent role of technology in Far West Texas and American and Mexican culture and my life (e.g., last week's post, Notes on Stephen Talbott's The Future Does Not Compute), I've been noodling about social media, Twitter in particular.

Back in 2009 when it was sparkly new, I wrote a celebratory essay about Twitter for Literal. I stand by what I said; Twitter has its creative possibilities. But then as now, to quote myself:

Fster than a wlnut cn roll dwn t roof of a hen house, were gng 2 see t nd of cvlizatn

It has become increasingly clear to me that, considering Twitter's attention-fracturing, addictive qualities, and general yuckiness (hashtag mobs, trolls, etc), on balance, it's not for me.

In fact, I sincerely wish that I had never bothered setting up an account with Twitter in the first place.

But I have not deleted my account, cmmayo1, because, after all, I have a goodly number of followers and therefore, when I run a guest blog, book review, or Q & A, I will tweet the URL to that post as a courtesy to the author. And I know that there are still a few thoughtful, readerly and writerly souls out there, checking in on their Twitter feed, now and then, who may see such tweets and find them of interest and value. You know who you are.

[UPDATE JANUARY 2018: I dislike Twitter's attention-fracking mobdom intensely, however I have decided to keep the account @cmmayo1 to tweet as a courtesy to those writers who have given me a Q & A; as a courtesy to their publishers; and, when the occasion calls for it, which is very rare indeed, I'll tweet as a courtesy to my publishers. That's it. I prefer to invest what I think of as my "communication writing energy" in this blog, email and, yeah verily, snail mail.]

P.S. Everything I have to say about Facebook I said here.

P.P. S. Nicholas Carr has two extra-extra-crunchily crunchy pieces on Twitter in Politico, this one in 2015 and this one in January 2018.

# # #

TEN HANDS

Today's 5 minute writing exercise is "Ten Hands":

Describe five different pairs of hands. (Some things to consider might be color; texture; shape; symmetry; condition; scars; tattoos; jewelry; etc.) For each pair of hands assign a name and a profession.

> Help yourself to 364 more free five minute writing exercises on my workshop page here.

P.S. As ever, you can find many more resources for writers here, and recommended reading on the creative process here.


# # #

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Q & A with Leslie Pietrzyk 

On the Siren Song of the Online World and on Writing Silver Girl

On Seeing as an Artist

Tulpa Max, or Notes on the Afterlife of a Resurrection

A Banquet of Literary Translations for Travelers & ALTA Fabulosity

This post is dedicated to two of my favorite Spanish language translators, both ever and always the very souls of kindness and dedication and generosity, who could not be at ALTA this year: Cola Franzen and Margaret Sayers Peden. 

Dear reader, if you are at all interested in literary translation, whether you are the shyest of maybe-might-want-to-try-its or, shall we say, the Grand Poo-Bah of Literary Translation Theory Crunchiness, if you haven't already, take a look at the excellent work of ALTA, the American Literary Translators Association and their annual conference. For greater national coverage, the annual fall conference changes venue from year to year. In 2014 it was held in Milwaukee, last year, Tucson; this year, Oakland, California; next year (brrrrr) Minneapolis. 

Herewith, my recap of ALTA Oakland 2016:

[[ WHEREABOUTSPRESS.COM ]]

Voila, the historic Whereabouts Press editors photo taken on October 7, 2016 in Oakland, after the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) Conference panel celebrating the Literary Travel Companion series-- and a dangerously caloric lunch of fried chicken and waffles at Miss Ollie's. From left: Jill Gibian, editor of Argentina; Alexis Levitin, editor of Brazil; William Rodarmor, editor of France and French Feast; our guru, visionary founding publisher of the Whereabouts Press Travelers Literary Companion series, David Peattie; and, far right, Yours Truly, editor of Mexico. 

The Travelers Literary Companions paperbacks are not guidebooks, but carefully curated collections of writing about a country by writers from that country, many in English translation for the first time. If you are planning any travels, for real or via armchair, to any of these countries or, say, Chile, Costa Rica, Greece, Israel, Italy, Vietnam and so many more... any of one of these "travelers literary companions" deserves space-- and it won't take up much-- in your hand luggage.

> Listen in to my interview with NPR about Mexico: A Literary Traveler's Companion, and read some of the stories by Araceli Ardón's "It Is Nothing of Mine";  Mónica Lavín's "Day and Night" (both my translations) and Geoff Hargreaves' translation of Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo's "The Green Bottle" at 
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5317783


MORE ALTA FABULOSITY

[[ JESSE LEE KERCHEVAL'S LATEST
TRANSLATIONS OF URUGUAYAN POETRY ]]

The other highlight for me was the chance to see my amigas Patricia Dubrava and Clare Sullivan, among so many others, old friends and new:

Pamela Carmel; 

Ellen Cassedy, who has a new book out of translations from the Yiddish (more about that anon); 

Barbara Goldberg; 

Susan Harris of Words Without Borders; 

Jesse Lee Kercheval, who continues doing wonders for Uruguayan poetry; 

Dennis Maloney of White Pine Press; 

Amanda Powell; 

Jessica Powell; 

Mahmud Rahman; 

Carolina de Robertis;

Zack Rogow, co-author of the play Colette Uncensored and blogger extraordinaire at Advice for Writers (see his take on the Nobel Prize for Bob Dylan) ;

Alberto Ruy Sánchez;

Mark Statman; 

and, surely having left aside a football team's worth of excellent people, I must now conclude with the deftly brilliant translator of Mexican poetry Mark Weiss.

One especially memorable panel included the reading of works by the late poet Eduardo Chirinos by his translator, G.J. Racz. Check out Still Life with Flies, published by the elegant Dos Madres Press.

For the Spanish bilingual readings I read an excerpt from my translation "The Apaches of Kiev," a hot-off-the-blog short story by Mexican writer Agustín Cadena.

PS. TheBoxWalla.com guy said that where it's happening is Instagram. Oh well! 

> Read Patricia Dubrava's recap on the conference, "Only at ALTA"

MY EVER-GROUNDING TAKEAWAY

The longer I am at this "business" I find that behind all the kazoos and flutes and trumpets and drumrolls and Potemkinesquerie, literary translation is, in the end, a labor of love. It calls certain poets and dreamers, for a time. For some, literary translation becomes a lifelong path, a yoga. For others, their enthusiasm lasts until their illusions are peeled away and/or their energies are spent, and for most, that will be quickly. What I said in a previous blog post on literary travel writing also applies to literary translation:

I would tell any young writer getting started today that if you want the freedom to write things you will be proud of, first find a reliable alternative income source and from there-- always living below your means-- build and diversify your sources of income away from the labor market. (Getting an MFA so you can teach in a creative writing program? That might have made a smidge of sense two decades ago. Now you'd be better off starting a dog grooming business, and I am not joking.) Yes, if you are brilliant, hard-working and lucky, you might one day make a living from your creative writing. But why squander your creative energy for your best work worrying about generating income from, specifically, writing? Quality and market response only occasionally coincide. Jaw-dropping mysteries abound. 

(Did I mention, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize?)

In other words, barriers to entry in most of the arts are lower than a slug's basement, while those artists with staying power beyond a first book, first show, first whatever, prove to be few. The big hiding-in-plain-sight secret is that money may provide an advantage, but it's vital only at the bare, survival-level. Somehow, even billionaires with a yen to make art find their days and weeks and months and years gummed up with hithering and thithering; yet throughout the history of the book, writers with tremendous, even horrendous obligations and/or challenges, whether from work or family or health or in war-time, have managed to write, to make art. The War of Art, as Steven Pressfield titles his book, requires personal resources more powerful than mere money.

OK, but, dear reader, don't let this natter about love & yoga & the war of art stop you from buying a Whereabouts Press book from the Traveler's Literary Companion series!! I am proud to say that Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion is still in-print on its 10th anniversary and available from any one of a number of online and bricks-and-mortar booksellers. And here's hoping that Patricia Dubrava and I can put together the collection of our translations (some hers, some mine) of Agustín Cadena's short stories and find it the publisher he well deserves.

More anon.

*   *   *

MISC UPDATES FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF LABORS OF LOVE

Almost finished with my translation of a most unusual and poetic collection of short stories by Mexican writer Rose Mary Salum... And almost finished with Marfa Mondays podcast 21... Stay tuned... 

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Café San Martín: Reading Mexican Poet Agustín Cadena 

at the Café Passé in Tucson, Arizona

"Translating the Other Side":
Transcript of my Remarks for the 
American Literary Translators Association Conference Panel
Translating Across the Border:
Tucson, 2015

Why Translate? 
The Case of the President of Mexico's Secret Book

Mexico City Lit: Agustin Cadena, Patricia Dubrava & Yours Truly, Plus a Note on the Past & Future of the Literary Magazine

What a thrill it is to see the latest from MexicoCity Lit, five stories by Agustín Cadena, all translated by my dear amiga Patricia Dubrava except the last one, "The Vampire," which is translated by Yours Truly (the latter originally published in the Canadian litmag Exile).

> Read the whole enchilada here.

As Mexico City Lit says of Cadena, "since the early 90s, his eerie, brilliant stories have been a major reference point in Mexican literature; Juan Domingo Arguelles has called him one of the best writers of his generation." I most enthusiastically concur.

[AGUSTIN CADENA]

This latest publication in Mexico City Lit had its genesis in my meeting one of its editors, María Cristina Fernández Hall, at the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) meeting last October in Tucson, Arizona.

(See my posts apropos of that conference: "Translating Across the Border" and "Translating Contemporary Latin America Poets and Writers: Embracing, Resisting, Escaping the Magnetic Pull of the Capital". For that conference's Cafe Latino series I also read Cadena's poem "Café San Martín" together with my translation that appears in the anthology edited by Sarah Cortez, Goodbye Mexico. >> Listen in here. )

More Cadena links to surf:

>Visit Cadena's blog El vino y al hiel

> You can find one of Cadena's stories, the haunting "Lady of the Seas" in my collection of 24 Mexican writers, Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion. 
> Listen to my interview about translating Mexican literature for NPR here. 
> Read Cadena's "Lady of the Seas."

> More Translating Beyond Borders: Cadena's "Blind Woman" in BorderSenses

Finally, here's a photo of me and Patricia Dubrava from ALTA-- Pat is pointing to Carne verde, piel negra / An Avocado from Michoacán, the Tameme chapbook of Cadena's story together with my translation. Viva!

[C.M. MAYO AND PATRICIA DUBRAVA,
CELEBRATING MEXICAN WRITER AND POET AGUSTIN CADENA,
AT THE AMERICAN LITERARY TRANSLATORS ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
TUCSON, ARIZONA, 2015]

A NOTE ON THE PAST & FUTURE OF THE LITERARY MAGAZINE

[YOURS TRULY, EDITOR OF TAMEME.
AND VISITING AMIGA PHOTOGRAPHER
MIRIAM BERKELEY AT THE
AWP BOOK FAIR, NEW YORK CITY, 2008]

I always feel an extra pulse of gratitude for literary magazine editors because, having founded and edited a litmag myself, I know how much work goes into not only selecting work, but editing, designing, formatting, distribution, tax reports, schlepping to book fairs, and ye olde PR. 

Notice that I didn't mention fulfillment because-- bring out the Kleenex-- almost no one buys these things. It may appear that people do: there's the splendiferous assortment of litmags at your local Barnes & Noble and also at many independent bookstores, and for US poets, short story writers and creative nonfictioneers, the ever more mega annual AWP Book Fair with its dozens upon dozens of tables of litmags-- many sponsored by MFA programs in creative writing. But alas, with the singular exception of Cenizo Journal, as far as I've been able to ascertain in my two decades of hithering & thithering in this particular village, as far as commercial viability goes, its name is Potemkin. But beyond the merely cosmetic, a Potemkin Village does have its purposes, rarified, noodathipious, and impractical as they may be. (What is noodathipious? Oh, I made that up.) 

But here's the thing: Market for it or not, there is no getting around the immense delight in writing, in reading, and in doing the good work of bringing authors and readers together by curating, packaging, and presenting the wickedly wondrous little package known as a literary magazine. 

(As the Whopper is to the amuse gueule, so is the commercial paperback thriller to the litmag. Is it a scrumptious amuse gueule? You decide. Hmm, I'll take the one with the lobster clawlet on the dab of pesto. Some people will eat mousse des intestins d'anguille. OK, enough with the food analogies.)

[THE THIRD AND FINAL ISSUE OF TAMEME
MAGAZINE. THE COVER PAINTING IS
'THE VISITORS II"
BY DEREK BUCKNER]

My magazine, Tameme, was one of the last in traditional format to come out before the digital tsunami. It was back in the early 1990s, when I first started publishing my own poetry and short fiction and translations of Mexican works in various litmags from the Quarterly to the Paris Review, that I came up with the notion of bringing Canadian, US and Mexican writers and poets and their translators all together in a bilingual journal. (See this note about various antecedents including Botteghe Oscure, El corno emplumado, and Mandorla, and subsequently, the outstanding contribution that is Rose Mary Salum's Literal.)

The first issue of Tameme, made possible by, among many other things and many other people, my dad and his experience in the printing industry, came off the presses-- these were traditional presses-- in 1999. Boxes upon boxes ended up in the garage. We did metaphorical mud wrestling with New Jersey-based distributors. We mailed out piles and piles and piles of review copies. We mailed out press releases. We attended book fairs. We did all sorts of things that me exhaust me now just to think of them. Oh, and one of them was, we maintained one of the very first websites, www.tameme.org. As of about a decade ago, the software to make that site is no longer even available.

Alas, apart from its memorial website, Tameme is no more. I didn't want to continue publishing it without my dad. As his health failed, the project retreated into a chapbook series-- we did bring out two excellent chapbooks, one by Agustín Cadena and the other a collection of poems by Jorge Fernández Granados translated by John Oliver Simon-- and then finally folded. 

All of which is to say, these days I sometimes feel like a Comanche gazing up at an airplane. 

If I were to start a litmag today, it would look something like Mexico City Lit-- electronic, edgy, and rich with visual art. I love-love-LOVE that Cadena's stories are accompanied by the selection of photographs by Livia Radwanski. A cyber shower of jpeg lotus petals upon y'all! It is an honor to have had my translation of "The Vampire" included-- and, dear reader, do check out the short stories by Cadena, they are both rare and delectable. And free! Such is the future of the labor of love in the white-hot cauldron of culture that is a literary magazine. 

Your comments are ever and always welcome.

Click here.

My bananalicious podcast-packed newsletter goes out maybe 

in another month. Should the planetoids align noodathipiously. 

I invite you to opt in.

In Celebration of Literal

Out of the Forest of Noise:

On Publishing the Literary Short Story

A Conversation with Rose Mary Salum

On Making Connections with Literature and Art

Twitter Is

Why Translate? The Case of the President of Mexico's Secret Book

More Translating Beyond Borders: BorderSenses Fall 2015 issue with Agustín Cadena's "Blind Woman"

El Paso on my mind... I just received my gorgeous Fall 2015 issue of the El Paso-based literary journal, BorderSenses, which includes my translation of a poem by Mexican poet Agustín Cadena, "Blind Woman" ("La ciega.") Also in this beautiful issue is a poem by none other than Diana Anhalt.





BLIND WOMAN
By Agustin Cadena, Translated by C.M. Mayo
(Bordersenses, Fall 2015)

With its fingernails, shadow 
peeled away reality.
Like a doll's skin,
the world, the other world,
came apart.
      Only this which is true
remained visible.
She seems to contemplate something and, maybe,
with her soul, she does contemplate.
      In the sky of her eyes
the wind of desire stirs,
blurs these clouds of hers.


> For those of you read Spanish, check out Cadena's blog El vino y la hiel. 

> Plus: read my translation of his short story "Lady of the Seas" in my anthology Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion. 

> Extra plus plus: my dear amiga Patricia Dubrava also translates Cadena. Check out her blog post about him here. 

Agustín Cadena is one of Mexico's literary treasures. I am very proud to say that he is also my translator (of my most recent book, and others), and his translation of my essay "A Visit to Swan House" appears in this month's issue of Letras Libres. (More about that anon.)

> Listen in anytime to my reading of another translation of one of Cadena's poems, "Café San Martin," from Sarah Cortez's anthology, Goodbye Mexico, here.

> An age ago, BorderSenses published one of my wiggier poems, "Man High," which you can read online here. (Nope, it's not about dope.)

> More about my translations of Mexican poetry and fiction of Agustín Cadena, Mónica Lavín, Araceli Ardón, Rose Mary Salum and Ignacio Solares, among others, here. 

[Fall 2015 issue of BorderSenses]

Well, I may be slower than a tortoise on a glacier with "Marfa Mondays," the 24 podcast series apropos of my book in-progress, but I am moving forward with podcast #21, which goes to Bracketville, Texas (a scooch east of the Pecos) and is about one of the most unusual communities anywhere, and its unique association whose members have worked to preserve stories of the ancestors, stories that have no more apt adjective than Biblical. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, listen in here anytime to the other 20 podcasts posted to date.

Blood Over Salt in Borderlands Texas:
Q & A with Paul Cool about Salt Warriors

Translating Across the Border

From Incense to Osmotherapy by Dr. Arnoldo Krumm-Heller

On Writing About Mexico: Secrets and Surprises 

(University of Texas El Paso Centennial Lecture 2015)

CLICK HERE.

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Café San Martín: Reading Mexican Poet Agustín Cadena at the Café Passé in Tucson, Arizona

Sparkling sky and only a jeans jacket on the night before Halloween, University of Arizona students everywhere, in witches' hats and zombie makeup: that's how it was in Tucson when, as part of the American Literary Translators Conference "Café Latino" bilingual reading fiesta at Café Passé in Tucson, I read my translation, together with the Spanish original, of Mexican poet Agustín Cadena's poem "Café San Martín." That translation appears in poet Sarah Cortez's recent anthology, Goodbye Mexico (Texas Tech Press).

> Read Cadena's poem and about Goodbye Mexico here.

> Listen to the recording of my reading of Cadena's "Cafe San Martin" in the Café Passé as a podcast here.

Alas, Cadena could not be in Tucson because he lives in Hungary, where he teaches Latin American Literary in Debrecen. Follow his blog, El vino y la hiel.

Cadena's name and many works -- he is incredibly prolific and writes in almost every genre--were mentioned many times over the course of this year's ALTA conference. My dear amiga Patricia Dubrava, who also translates Cadena's poems and short fiction, shared a panel with me on the following day. 

> Read about that panel, and my talk for that panel, here.

It was an extra special honor to read Cadena's poem and my translation because not only is Cadena a treasure of a writer-- among the very finest Mexico has ever produced-- but he has translated many of my works, including the most recent Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution (as Odisea metafísica hacia la Revolución Mexicana). 


The audience was also especially distinguished, including Jeffrey C. Barnett, Mary Berg, Ellen Cassedy, Dick Cluster,  Pamela Carmel, Jill Gibian, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Suzanne Jill Levine, Angela McEwan, Barbara Paschke, Liliana Valenzuela, and so many other writers, poets and literary translators of note. 

And a very special thank you to Alexis Levitin, my favorite Portuguese translator (and, by the way, editor of Brazil: A Traveler's Literary Companion), who organized and MC'ed the reading.




P.S. I will be teaching the workshop "Podcasting for Writers" as part of the San Miguel Writers Conference this February 2016 in Mexico. More about that on my workshop schedule page and on the San Miguel Writers Conference page.

Five Quick Questions for Agustín Cadena

Q & A with Agustin Cadena

(Tameme)

Cadena's "Lady of the Seas" in Robert Giron's ArLiJo

La ofrenda debida by Agustín Cadena

Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion

listen to a podcast of the preface

plus read the short story by Agustin Cadena

Translating Across the Border

Translating Contemporary Latin American Poets and Writers:

Embracing, Resisting, Escaping the Magnetic Pull of the Capital

CLICK HERE.