Articles and updates from the New Directions staff
There has been a great proliferation of fiction in our day. There has been an even greater decline in quality. Since Ulysses, if you accept Ulysses as a great novel, there have …
As the years move onward, sounds change. Sounds that used to be listened to in older times are not heard now. Climb up Madder Hill on any still, frosty morning, you will hear no …
The Emissary is a finalist* for the 2018 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Our heartfelt congratulations to Yoko Tawada and her translator Margaret Mitsutani. In the …
Congratulations to John Keene, 2018 MacArthur Fellow! Our only front list writer whose manuscript was acquired from the slush pile, John Keene is something of a legend at New …
AN INTERVIEW WITH AHMED BOUANANI June 1974 The reclusive poet, novelist, and filmmaker Ahmed Bouanani died on February 6, 2011. In an interview from 1974, he reflected upon a film …
Congratulations to our friend László Krasznahorkai whose story collection _The World Goes On—_translated by John Batki, Ottilie Mulzet, and George Szirtes—has been shortlisted for …
TRUE CONFESSIONAL I was conceived in the summer of Nineteen Eighteen when some kind of war was going on but it didn’t stop two people from making love in Ossining that year I like …
Because there might also be a world in which a man-sized amphibian appearing in your kitchen would feel like a good thing. Dorothy, the central character in Rachel Ingalls’s Mrs. …
From the dusty shelves in our vault: a poem by American Harry Brown from his book The End of the Decade, published by New Directions in 1940. The jacket describes Brown as …
JEFFREY YANG Nathaniel Tarn, Gondwana. From the snowy north, head south to planet Earth’s other pole in extremis—Tarn’s songs sung from the deepest wells and cells of the heart, …
Hora de Clarice is a worldwide celebration which takes place each year on Clarice Lispector’s birthday in Brazil, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Frankfurt, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, …
Eroticism Music Poetry Drama Pyrotechnics Surfing The art of the novel Glass painting Tennis Water colors Oil painting Rhetoric The art of cooking Architecture Squash Weight …
He sat in the sun with the blanket about him, considering, with his hands lying out like emaciated strangers before him, that today the sun would endure a little longer. Certainly …
Once there was a woman who gave birth to a seal white as haar, furred like a glove. It slid into the world in a rush of kelp and brine, moon-eyed, cold as starlight. She wrapped it …
In honor of Ezra Pound’s birth, on this day, 132 years ago, we share two musings by our publisher, James Laughlin, who started New Directions on Pound’s advice in 1936. …
“You can’t forget,” a honeyed, babyish voice was saying. Stefan is sitting in the dark, the voice is behind the locked door. She cannot go in, he has forbidden it. He didn’t allow …
New Directions and NYRB Classics invite you to submit one sentence in the style of Henry Green writing on a napkin after his third martini. The person who pens the winning entry …
Last week a massive iceberg broke off of Antarctica. This month, ND publishes Gondwana, a new collection of poems by Nathaniel Tarn, named after the ancient supercontinent that …
Susan Howe on Emily Dickinson’s ENVELOPE POEMS, at McNally Jackson Picture Room, 2016.
To understand the vertical, the perpendicular, one must have sufficient thrusting of the psyche into the margins of existence. As if whole walls of sound were thrown up into the …
In our synagogue lives an animal about the size of a marten. There have been many sightings of it, as it will allow a human being to approach to within five feet. Its color is a …
| THE INDIVIDUAL’S SOLILOQUY | I’m the individual. \ First I lived by a rock \ (I scratched some figures on it) \ Then I looked for some place more suitable. \ …
In my last post, I described New Directions’ improbable trip to rural Argentina to witness the dance at the heart of Leila Guerriero’s US debut, A Simple Story. This month, …
How often do you get the chance to step into one of your favorite books, look around, see the sights, chat with the characters? Then again, how often would you want to? The …
In 1996, Susan Howe taught an English class at the University of Buffalo. The syllabus recently surfaced online. Our publisher Barbara Epler described it as “the craziest …
Bernadette for President!
Arthur Rimbaud, A SEASON IN HELL Cover A Season in Hell A Season in Hell Bob Dylan: “I came across one of [Rimbaud’s] letters called ‘Je est un autre,’ which translates into …
We are deeply saddened by the passing of the great Elaine Lustig Cohen—genius designer, artist and longstanding member of the New Directions family. …
Michael Palmer, _**The Laughter of the Sphinx **_At the beach the other week I saw a sculpture of a sphinx. Children were making eyes out of chalky shells as they pranced back and …
Of the 1500 or so books that New Directions has published since 1936, around 1200 are in print. The ND library contains every single edition published. A dark, dusty room, the …
