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Tag: editorial

  • Editorial: (found) families

    Editorial: (found) families

    Sometimes it feels that there is nothing more fictitious than the ‘found’ family: a community of people who choose to relate to each other like family without being forced into it by accident of birth. Fictitious, because it seems too good to be true – and because as a trope, it’s everywhere. Found families fight crimes and demons, hunt kings and animals, save the world and start the apocalypse. ‘Real’ families, on the other hand, joke around in group chats, argue over the dinner table and forget each other’s birthdays.

    In this issue of PEN Transmissions, we explore different types of family, different ways of building community.

    We spoke to Samanta Schweblin about the danger posed by the concept of normality, technology, and how she dissects relationships in her writing.

    Saskia Vogel writes about the ‘logical family‘ she found in the fetish scene in LA – which is also the topic of her debut novel.

    Sarah Shaffi explores the found family as a beloved trope – and nowhere is it more beloved than in superhero (or, as Sarah points out, supervillain) fiction. Having superpowers is lonely, and who better to team up with than others who deal with the same issue?

    Finally, Ege Dündar explores what family means to him, having been forced to live separated from those closest to him.

    We hope you enjoy this issue of Transmissions. Until next time!

    – Theodora Danek, editor

     

  • Metamorphosis

    Metamorphosis

    At the time of writing these words, the year is drawing to an end. It is a season to reflect on what has occured. It is a season to think about change and transformation, a season to think about metamorphosis. So that’s what we asked our writers to do. You may think of Kafka; you may think of Ovid; you may think of Transformers, of cars turning into terrifying robots. They thought about language, motherhood, multiple selves, and – of course – politics.

    Alia Trabucco Zerán explores recent changes in language: can the transformation of Castillian Spanish kickstart a wider change in society? Are new words what we need right now, when the power of words is in the spotlight every day – as Alia puts it, ‘new words to imagine a new reality’?

    Yan Ge tackles metamorphosis from a more personal perspective: they are the changes that take place when writing and working in a second language, and the freedom of being a writer, able to ‘cultivate multiple selves, to live a life of polyphony’.

    Pınar Öğünç left her home in Turkey for eleven months. When she opened the door to her flat again, she was a different person than the one that had left. The country had changed as well, profoundly – as it had been for years. In her essay for Transmissions, Pınar reflects on the political and personal metamorphosis that she has witnessed during that time.

    During her time away from Turkey, Pınar was a writer in residence with English PEN’s Writer’s at Risk programme in London. (You can read more about how she explored the city via its libraries here.) Pınar’s essay is a reminder that writers in Turkey and around the world are at risk for speaking their mind, and that it is a luxury to think that writing isn’t political. Let’s keep this in mind as we shake of the skins of our old selves at the end of another year.

    – Theodora Danek, Writers in Translation Manager, English PEN

  • Editorial: hidden things

    Editorial: hidden things

    As the days are getting shorter, we investigate things that are tucked away in dark corners of the brain – or the national consciousness. Things that are known but not spoken of, relegated to the private sphere (or the more obscure corners of the internet). In this issue of PEN Transmissions, we explore all manner of hidden things with Elias Khoury, Livia Franchini, Guy Gunaratne, Ahmed Saadawi and Jonathan Wright.

    Guy Gunaratne thinks about the connection between terrorism, incels and the performance of violent masculinity

    Livia Franchini reflects on the impact being bilingual and going ‘back and forth between two distinct, self-sufficient identities of home’ has had on her private and public selves.

    We were thrilled to speak to not one, but two great authors for this issue – and even better, to a translator, too!

    The great Lebanese writer Elias Khoury is back with a new novel, My Name Is Adam, the story of a man who decides to investigate what happened in 1948 in Palestine in the city of Lydda where he was born. We spoke to him about the fascinating genesis of the book.

    And finally, we spoke to Ahmed Saadawi and Jonathan Wright about Frankenstein in Baghdad: the novel’s success, its religious elements and truth in storytelling.

    From private selves to male subcultures, from undead monsters to collective trauma, we hope you enjoy this issue of PEN Transmissions.

  • Editorial: on sport

    Editorial: on sport

    It would be wrong to say that I’ve only thought about sport in the past few months, but it’s been on my mind more than ever. I grew up watching snow-based sport on TV during the long, cold, dark winter. Skiing, skijumping, biathlon, Nordic Combined: the soothing swish of carbon on a frozen surface was a distraction from the short days outside, and the white of the snow brought some light to our – often snowless – Vienna streets. I was less aware of the patriotism, the flag-waving, what it means for an athlete to be declared a national hero.

    These days, when I think of sport I think of politics. I think about Mesut Özil, who kicked off a debate about politics, race and football in Germany, about Colin Kaepernick, or about Nicola Werdenigg, a former skier who spoke up about the endemic abuse in Austria’s skiing academies in the 1970s. 

    sport

    Sport is emblematic of what goes on in society as a whole. In this issue of PEN Transmissions, we’ve looked at it as a method of inclusion – and exclusion. As a method of belonging as well as of extreme alienation. As a site for campaigning and protest, for enforcing discipline and disrupting it. We looked at sport as a part of our collective identity.

    Jashvina Shah writes about being a brown woman in a sport structured around white men: ice hockey in North America. Kylie Maslen tells us about how baseball and Australian Rules Football helped her through a particularly difficult time in her life. Sayed Alwadaei reminds us why professional sport (and particularly the Formula One) is a site of protest in Bahrain. And Han Yujoo, in a translation by Janet Hong, tells us what it’s like to have an athlete as a mother: not easy.

    I hope you enjoy this issue of PEN Transmissions – even if, especially if, you dislike sport. I’ll leave you with words of wisdom by a young hockey player who shall remain unnamed. If you think about the past then it’s going to haunt you in the future. You’ve just got to think about the present and go out there and play hockey.

    If only!

     

    – Theodora Danek, Writers in Translation Programme Manager, English PEN

  • Editorial: nature and its absence

    Editorial: nature and its absence

    What do you think about when you think about nature? Weeds? Mountains? The sea? Do you think about its absence, or perceived absence, in cities? Or do you ponder human nature, like Petrarch was moved to do when he climbed Mount Ventoux? In this issue of PEN Transmissions, we track some of those thoughts – though, alas, no Renaissance philosophers.

    We came to think about nature and its absence when we read Iranian poet Mahvash Sabet‘s extraordinary poetry, steeped in reflections on the natural world and written in prison, where she herself had no access to it. What is our relationship with nature? How can we live without it? You can find our conversation about poetry, beauty, prison and flowers here.

    Like Mahvash, Luljeta Lleshanaku is a poet with nature on her mind. Growing up in a small, ‘wild’ town in Albania, at that time a repressive Communist regime, the natural world was more reliable than many other things. After all, as Luljeta says, ‘bees don’t betray you. Nature never betrays you.’

    But nature is more than just trees, bees, snow and wind – especially when humans get involved. Jeremy Tiang reflects on Singapore and its impulse to control both human nature and the natural world, from supertrees to sexuality, and wonders if the country is ready to ‘let in a little wildness’.

    Finally, Daisy Johnson (whose novel Everything Under is longlisted for the Man Booker Prize) dives into how language shapes our nature, how we are changed by the words we use. Daisy wins a special Transmissions award by referring to a perfect film in her piece. Find out which one, here.

    I hope you enjoy this issue of PEN Transmissions. Let me end by quoting  from an Iris Murdoch novel that I often think about, where an Australian teenager visits England for the first time: He was depressed by the countryside which they all thought so pretty, and constantly exclaimed about instead of taking it for granted.

    – Theodora Danek, Writers in Translation Programme Manager, English PEN

  • Editorial: secrets

    Editorial: secrets

    In my misspent youth, I read a detective novel set in the later Roman Empire, where the detective solves a crime by discovering a secret means of communication: someone, I forget who, or why, scratches messages into the wooden shells of the wax tablets used for note taking. With the wax melted back into place, the messages are undetectable. A secret hidden in plain sight, so to speak. A message underneath the message. A different form of palimpsest. I loved it.

    The idea that we are surrounded by secret undercurrents that shape our interactions is appealing and depressing in an equal fashion. Appealing because there are mysteries to be uncovered, intimacies to be shared. Depressing because there are unspoken forces that can shape and ruin lives. In this issue of PEN Transmissions, four writers look at both types of secrets. Margarita García Robayo remembers the secret and secretive nature of sex when she was growing up in conservative Carribean Colombia. Jaap Robben investigates secrets and boundaries: the unspoken agreements between us, and what happens when we renege on them. Sarvat Hasin reflects on the different types of secrets that texts hold, conscious or unconscious, ‘like teeth hidden in a close-mouthed smile’. And Eley Williams shares a specific secret with us. I won’t spoil it for you.

    The Roman wax tablets, by the way, are real, and the messages on them are as well. When I grew older, I realised that, while the detective elements were certainly invented, the scratched remains of messages once hidden underneath layers of wax are really there. They hold a different type of secret, one that is much more precious to me now: a clue to figuring out how people in the past interacted, their ephemeral, throwaway notes made visible.

    I hope you enjoy this issue of PEN Transmissions. Is it secret? Is it safe?

    – Theodora Danek, Writers in Translation Programme Manager, English PEN

  • Editorial: writing the past

    Editorial: writing the past

    Earlier this year, Hayden White died. White came up with the concept of metahistory, the idea that writing history is always shaped by literary concerns. Narrative drives everything. We are haunted by our desire to tell a compelling story about the past.

    In this issue of PEN Transmissions, we asked four writers to reflect on different aspects of how they write the past: from personal history to a country’s official (or unofficial) past, from heroic narratives to fragmented memories, how do we incorporate the past into our writing?

    We spoke to Spanish author Javier Cercas, author of the Man Booker International longlisted The Impostor, a ‘novel of truth’ about Enric Marco, a man who lied about almost every aspect of his life, including his supposed imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp. Doaa Mohaisen writes to us from Qatar about the historical amnesia surrounding the heroic narratives about Gaza, her home. Kenyan writer Peter Kimani tells us about the dual narratives of history. And finally, Norman Erikson Pasaribu delivers a stunning personal history of growing up queer in Indonesia. I strongly recommend reading Norman’s poem ‘On a Pair of Young Men in the Underground Parking Garage at fX Sudirman Mall’ as a companion piece.

    Writing the past is messy, complicated and always political. In our conversation, Javier Cercas argued that the past that interests him ‘is still a dimension of the present, [a past] without which the present is mutilated, without which the present can’t be grasped’. Arguably that is true for most aspects of history, in one way or another. You never know which bits of history will be utilised for a political purpose. What a relief, then, that we have writers to help us make sense of it all. I hope that this issue of PEN Transmissions will act as a starting point on that journey.

    Until next time!

    – Theodora Danek, Writers in Translation Programme Manager, English PEN

  • Editorial: hope after crisis

    Editorial: hope after crisis

    There is a line in Volker Braun’s great poem ‘Property’ that has been on my mind for the past few years. ‘Hope lay across the path like a trap.’ Stuck in an intractable political situation, can hope really turn out to be just that – a trap, something that keeps us tied to old ideas? Or is it the great motivator? And anyway, how do we keep hoping when things look bleak?

    In this issue of PEN Transmissions, we asked four writers what happens after a revolution, after a political crisis or transformation, once the cameras have moved on, when it’s just you and the aftermath of whatever happened. What happens to hope then?

    We spoke to Olga Tokarczuk, author of the Man Booker shortlisted Flights, about propaganda,and how she responds to the political climate in Poland with her writing. Basma Abdel Aziz, author of The Queue, writes to us from Egypt, seven years after the Arab Spring. The Egyptian regime lives on, she says, ‘because of those who prefer to stay safe and secure, no matter the price’. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan tells us about Go Home!, an anthology of Asian and Asian American writers for work on the topic of home – a book that was conceived of before Trump and Brexit, but which ‘joins its voice to those opposing the hatred that has come to feature all too often in our public discourse’. Finally, poet and writer Haile Bizen reports on his sudden departure from Asmara, his hometown in Eritrea, and the effect exile had on his writing and his life.

    Olga, Basma, Rowan and Haile remind us that every crisis has an afterlife, that every political upheaval changes lives forever, that the repercussions are felt for a long time. All the more important, then, that we continue to pay attention.

    As for my hopes? I hope you find this issue of PEN Transmissions inspiring. I hope it makes you think. I hope it makes you feel closer to the four writers we feature here. And I hope you come back next month for the next issue.

    – Theodora Danek, Writers in Translation Programme Manager, English PEN

  • Editorial: women 2018

    Editorial: women 2018

    Welcome to the first issue of PEN Transmissions, our new home for writers from around the world.  Our aim is to provide a venue for conversations that can move across continents and borders, mixing new and established voices and uniting writers with their readers, wherever they might be.

    Each issue will be themed. This being the Year of Publishing Women, we are dedicating our first issue to women’s writing, bringing together voices from Mexico by way of the US, Argentina, Singapore, and the UK.

    We begin with an interview with Ariana Harwicz, who was longlisted for this year’s Man Booker International Prize for Die, My Love, and has much to say about writing and womanhood. We then hear from Juliet Jacques, the acclaimed writer of Trans: A Memoir, who asks us to think about who is and is not permitted to be a woman writer. Sharlene Teo, author of the debut novel Ponti, describes how her writing is shaped by language and place. And Cristina Rivera Garza, whose genderbending novel The Illiac Crest is soon to be published by And Other Stories, offers her thoughts on how publishing women authors expands our sense of what is possible.

    So read on, and enjoy! And do join the conversation.

    – Maureen Freely, chair of English PEN, introduces PEN Transmissions.