Amherst College posts videos from the various Lit Fest 2016 events. The videos feature Angela Flournoy, Lauren Groff ’01, Deborah Treisman, Harold Augenbraum and Jen Acker ’00.
SARETTA MORGAN interviews MAURICE EMERSON DECAUL
Maurice Emerson Decaul is a poet, essayist, playwright, and librettist, whose work has appeared in The Common, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Narrative, Callaloo, and Holding it Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project, among others. A graduate of Columbia and New York Universities, he is currently working toward his MFA at Brown University.
Saretta Morgan corresponded with Decaul over several weeks by email, in person, and on the phone during the winter of 2015–2016. Both poets and military veterans, Morgan and Decaul talked about New Orleans, theater, race, and the military, as their conversation moved between themes of structure, dreams, and collectivity.
Arablit.org reviews our March 2015 conversation on contemporary Arabic fiction, which included readings by short-story writers Hassan Blasim and Hisham Bustani.
MassLive reports on the upcoming Amherst College 2016 LitFest, which will occur from March 3-5 on the Amherst College campus.
With KRYS LEE
Your name: Krys Lee
Current city or town: Seoul
How long have you lived there? Outside of my schooling years (elementary school to university), and a year in Rome, I’ve lived in Seoul all my life. So that would make it over half my life?
With V. PENELOPE PELIZZON
Your name: V. Penelope Pelizzon
Current city or town: Willimantic, Connecticut
How long have you lived here: 13 years.
The Best American Poetry 2016, ed. Edward Hirsch, included Rowan Ricardo Phillips’ “The First Last Light in the Sky,” from The Common Issue 09.
S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews GREGORY RABASSA
Gregory Rabassa is a genius you might pass on the streets of New York City without even knowing it. Born in 1922, he lived the early years of his life in Yonkers, New York before moving to a farm near Hanover, New Hampshire, four miles from Dartmouth College, where he studied as an undergraduate. In 1967, in his very first attempt at translation, Gregory Rabassa won the National Book Award for his translation of Julio Cortázar’s novel Rayuela (Hopscotch in English). Rabassa’s translation schedule filled up, and, in his own words, he was “too busy” with other projects when Gabriel García Márquez approached him about translating Cien Años de Soledad. At Cortázar’s urging, García Márquez agreed to wait three years until Rabassa’s schedule cleared. Upon the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1970, García Márquez famously declared that Rabassa’s English version of his book was better than the Spanish original.
Literary Hub named Ben Shattuck’s “There Once was a Dildo in Nantucket,” from The Common Issue 10, as one of their top ten most read stories of the year.
Longform features Kashana Cauley’s “The Electric City,” from The Common Issue 09 on their “Best of 2015” fiction list.
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