Events

Marathon Reading of Gertrude Stein's Making of Americans, Hosted by Triple Canopy

January 20-, 155 Freeman, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY

In celebration of the opening of the 155 Freeman Arts & Culture Center, Triple Canopy is pleased to present a marathon reading of Gertrude Stein's enormously long and allegedly unreadable novel The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress. Over one weekend, an invited list of New York-based artists, writers, publishers, scholars, and other collaborators will gather in Greenpoint to perform the entirety of Stein’s text in a continuous read-in, expected to last 48 hours, more or less. (A list of participants is now in formation.)

For more information, click here and here.

Translator Burton Pike on Gerhard Meier

February 8, 2012, 07:00 pm, The Center for Fiction in New York

Renowned translator Burton Pike returns to the Center to read from and discuss his new translation of Gerhard Meier's Isle of the Dead. Click here for more details, and to RSVP.

Baur and Bindschädler, two old men, friends from their days in the army, share a habitual walk to the edge of town, Baur speaking incessantly—circling between past and present, inconsequential observations and profound insights—while Bindschädler, equally unmoored, listens, observes, reflects. A meandering meditation on mortality, and a gentle complement to the work of contemporaries Samuel Beckett and Thomas Bernhard—not to mention Gerhard Meier's countryman Robert Walser—Isle of the Dead elevates a simple ramble along a riverside to the status of a metaphysical inquest, with Baur and Bindschädler's words and thoughts looping and colliding until it is nearly impossible to tell one man from the other.

Hebrew Literature Now: Symposium on Contemporary Israeli Literature

March 4-6, 2012, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

The Program in Jewish Culture and Society at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in collaboration with Dalkey Archive Press, is pleased to announce Hebrew Literature Now: an international symposium bringing together fourteen of the foremost young scholars in contemporary Hebrew literature, and the first scholarly event of its kind in either in the United States or Israel. The authors who will be discussed are all members of the generations born after 1970, and all began publishing during the twenty-first century. Though much of their work has had an enormous impact on the Israeli reading public, and has shaped the translation, publication, and marketing of Israeli fiction and poetry in the United States, this "new wave" has received no scholarly attention to date. Hebrew Literature Now will bring together scholars, writers, translators, and publishers, many of whom also hold academic positions at leading Israeli, American, and British universities, to present papers concerning a variety of authors (including Asaf Schurr and Eshkol Nevo, whose English-language debuts were recently published by Dalkey Archive), the issues their work investigates, and the challenges now being faced by literature in Hebrew both at home and in translation. The keynote speaker, Dan Laor, is a renowned critic, scholar, and editor focused upon Hebrew literature, and served as the Dean of Humanities at Tel Aviv University, fostering the creative talent of the new Israeli fiction and providing venues and other opportunities for their publication and success.

Not only will Hebrew Literature Now serve the scholarly community, including graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, but it will also offer the general public an opportunity to be introduced to writers who are already guiding lights in both Israeli literature and its translation worldwide. Preceding the opening reception, there will be a public reading of a sampling of relevant works, provided (and translated) by many of the participants.

This event was made possible by support from The Israel Project, through the Program in Jewish Culture and Society; the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature; the Office of Cultural Affairs, Consulate General of Israel in New York; and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Confirmed Participants:

Shai Ginsburg, Duke University

"Now and Then, History Re-imagined: Alon Hilu's Historical Novels"

Shiri Lev-Ari Israel 

"Return to Zionism"

Adriana Jacobs, Yale University

"Contemporary Poetry: Journals and Translations"

Dan Laor, Tel Aviv University

Keynote Address: "Writing the Holocaust: Is it Still Relevant?"

Adam Rovner, University of Denver

"Writers, Writing, and Publishing"

Philip Hollander, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"From Periphery to Center: The Development Town in Shimon Adaf's Fiction"

Yehezkel Rahamim, Tel Aviv University

"Black Diamonds: Literature from South Tel Aviv"

Yaron Peleg, Cambridge University / George Washington University

"Hebrew Literature in a Neo-national Age"

Eran Tzelgov, New York University 

"Taking Back the Streets: Israeli Poetry in the 2000s"

Todd Hasak-Lowy, University of Illinois, Chicago

"Motti, Writing, and Translating"

Dan Friedman, Arts and Culture Editor, Jewish Daily Forward

"Israeli Literature in the US"

Ranen Omer-Sherman, University of Miami

"Paradoxes of Identity: Jewish/Muslim Interpenetration in Almog Behar and Sayed Kashua"

Rachel Harris, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

"Homecoming, Zionism, and the New Dream in the Novels of Eshkol Nevo"

February 26th: Yoram Kaniuk (author of Life on Sandpaper) in conversation with Joshua Cohen (Witz), as part of BookFest 2012 at The Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94118. For further information, contact Stephanie Singer at ssinger@jccsf.org.

DECEMBER 5, 7:30 PM: An evening with Eshkol Nevo, author of Homesick, at The Program in Jewish Culture and Society, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Music Room, Levis Faculty Center. (For more information, please contact Craig Alexander.)

Joshua Cohen in conversation with Joshua Lambert, Sunday Oct 23 at the Yiddish Book Center.

David Rieff and Siri Hustvedt in conversation with Luisa Valenzuela, author of DARK DESIRES AND THE OTHERS, at McNally Jackson Bookstore. September 26 at 7 p.m.

Joseph McElroy will be reading from new work of his at the National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South at Irving Place. September 27 at 8 p.m.

OCTOBER 26TH at EUROPE HOUSE: DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS
Invites you to the launch of their anticipated SWISS LITERATURE SERIES
and PANEL DISCUSSION on EUROPEAN LITERATURE
Entrance is FREE but space is limited and an RSVP essential.
Europe House, 32 Smith Square, London SW1P 3EU
Event starts at 19:00. The talk will be followed by a wine reception.

First two books in the Swiss Literature Series:
WHY THE CHILD IS COOKING IN THE POLENTA by Aglaja Veteranyi
Largely autobiographical, Why the Child Is Cooking in the Polenta incorporates Veteranyi's own experiences as a circus child, refugee, and wanderer…
Aglaja Veteranyi was born in Bucharest to a family of circus artists who toured Europe relentlessly until they finally settled in Switzerland. Am actress, performer, and artist as well as a writer, she only published one novel – Why the Child is Cooking in the Polenta – during her lifetime, though other books have appeared posthumously. She committed suicide in 2002.

ISLE OF THE DEAD by Gerhard Meier
Isle of the Dead is a meandering meditation on mortality, and a gentle complement to the work of contemporaries Samuel Beckett and Thomas Bernhard – not to mention Meier's compatriot A cornerstone of Swiss modernism, at last available in English translation from one of the great German translators of our time: Burton Pike.
Gerhard Meier was born in 1917 in the Oberaargau region of Switzerland. Spending six months in a sanatorium for tuberculosis made him decide to leave his job at a lamp factory and devote himself exclusively to writing. He produced a steady stream of poetry and fiction thereafter, dying in 2008 at the age of 91.

Broadcaster and presenter Rosie Goldsmith will moderate a panel to discuss these works, and ideas about European literature in general, with the Swiss-French writer (and winner of this year's prestigious Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle) Bernard Comment; the Slovenian novelist Drago Jancar; Norwegian author Stig Sæterbakken; and art critic, editor and curator Jasia Reichardt.

The Swiss Literature Series at Dalkey Archive Press makes available major works of Swiss literature in English translation. Featuring exceptional authors at the forefront of Swiss letters, the series aims to introduce the rich intellectual and aesthetic diversity of contemporary Swiss writing and culture to English-language readers.
This series is published in collaboration with the Swiss Arts Council - Pro Helvetia, Zurich.

The first two titles in this series will be released in autumn 2011.

RSVP to: tennant@dalkeyarchive.com