They say we learn history to not repeat the same mistakes. But not much has changed at Columbia where they literally have archives of the historical moments where their students came together to stand on the right side of history over and over again.

🚨UPDATE🚨 THOUSANDS of students at Columbia University are on the plaza with 100s of students occupying the West Lawn

avoiding the discourse by only reading books in Chinese, a language with no tenses

tomorrow!

The Zone of Interest (2023) is known:

in China as 利益区域 (Interest Zone);
in Hong Kong as 特權樂園 (Privilege Paradise);
in Taiwan as 夢想集中營 (Concentration Camp of Your Dreams)

Translators, one of our own, Khalid from Gaza, who joined us virtually at the action lab at the ALTA conference, is trying to evacuate his family after their home was bombed. I know there are so many fundraisers, but your support would mean a lot.
gofundme.com/f/assist-my-fa…

actionists in singapore took to gardens by the bay calling for sanctions and divestment from the occupying forces

there’s a petition going around, please share widely and sign demanding for immediate sanctions

chng.it/v6d6Tmhybb

Absolutely recommend every book on this list & honored to have the short-story collection we published (OUT OF TIME by Samira Azzam, tr. Ranya Abdelrahman) recommended by an artist of the short-story form like Mai Al-Nakib.

Palestinian Women's Voices in Translation, recommended by Mai Al-Nakib

worldliteraturetoday.org/2024/march/pal…

a young Gazan woman trying to flee to safety in Egypt and pursue her dreams of becoming both a dentist and a writer. I'm going to contribute and would be grateful if you would join too. (7/7)

gofundme.com/f/mrv2dj-compl…

“I concluded long ago that PEN America is an unreliable narrator, not committed to the things it claims to be committed to, and PEN America keeps finding shocking new ways of demonstrating how correct that conclusion was.”
~Esther Allen

🔥

lithub.com/withdrawals-an…

Let's order books!

Specifically the ones withdrawn from PEN America's book awards this year!

Starting with Antonio di Benedetto X Esther Allen's THE SILENTIARY: 'A young man employed in middle management entertains an ambition to write a book' nyrb.com/products/the-s…

Last Tuesday I found out that my book Dyscalculia was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein award. I decided to decline this recognition and asked to be removed from the longlist in solidarity with the ongoing protest of PEN's continued normalization and denial of genocide.

Sublunary Editions and I declined a PEN America translation prize nomination and you should too!

Down with the genocide enabling that is structural to the Art World. Long live Palestine.

Esther Allen, together with Salman Rushdie and then-ED Michael Roberts, cofounded the PEN World Voices Festival Festival (in 2004 or 2005, depending how you count), @PENAmerica’s headline annual event, so this is a big effing deal:
twitter.com/estherlallen/s…

🍉 🍉

There's a new book group in town (*online*)! Cohosted by Center for the Art of Translation and Mechanics' Institute, the Contemporary Translation Works Book Group launches on May 1 with a discussion of Xu Zechen's BEIJING SPRAWL wi/ translator Jeremy Tiang.

More details: catranslation.org/event/contempo…

War crimes.

Haaretz.com reports that “Israel Created 'Kill Zones' in Gaza. Anyone Who Crosses Into Them Is Shot”

“It's quite possible that Palestinians who never held a gun in their lives were elevated to the rank of ‘terrorist’ posthumously, at least by the IDF.”