A Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event
A discussion on the limits and un-limits of sharing literature on the net
How has the way we present literature on the net changed over the past decade? Has it become more or less inclusive, more or less global? Are we getting a more diverse picture or is literature being reduced to listicles? If a website can reach anyone, anywhere, at any time, who are our audiences? What are literary websites in the States and Germany doing to draw in and involve those readers? And will it change the world?
Words without Borders is in its thirteenth year of bringing readers literature in translation from all over the globe, while
The Offing is a brand new venture hosting original writing in English alongside a selection of translations. In Germany, meanwhile, most literary magazines have yet to embrace the internet to the fullest, to put it mildly. Is that skepticism wise or are German readers and writers missing out as a result? What has the expansion of writing and criticism to the net brought readers other than seemingly never-ending choice? Has it helped writers otherwise marginalized in the literary conversation to reach audiences? And what does the net offer fans of international fiction for the future?
Join
Eric M. B. Becker from
Words without Borders,
Geoff Mak from
The Offing, and translator and
love german books blogger
Katy Derbyshire, fresh off the boat from Berlin, for a discussion on the limits and un-limits of sharing literature on the net.
Katy Derbyshire originates from London and has lived in Berlin for many years. She translates contemporary German writers including Inka Parei, Clemens Meyer, Helene Hegemann, and Christa Wolf. Katy blogs at
love german books and co-hosts a monthly translation lab and the bi-monthly Dead Ladies Show. The tenth and final issue of the online magazine for contemporary German-language writing she co-edits,
no man’s land, will be out at the end of 2015.
Eric M. B. Becker is literary translator and journalist and editor of
Words without Borders. In 2014, he earned a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for his translation of a collection of short stories from the Portuguese by Neustadt Prize for International Literature winner and 2015 Man Booker International Finalist Mia Couto, forthcoming from Biblioasis. He has also published translations of work by Brazilian writers Paulo Scott, Eric Nepomuceno, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade. He lives in New York.
Geoff Mak is Fiction Editor of
The Offing Magazine in Los Angeles. His literary features have appeared in
Forbes,
Flavorwire,
The Millions,
Guernica, and the
Los Angeles Review of Books. His interview subjects include Rachel Kushner, Ben Lerner, Karen Russell, and Justin Torres. His art criticism has appeared in
The Brooklyn Rail and
Posture Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn and is currently at work on a novel.
In cooperation with the German Book Office, New York.
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