Articles and updates from the New Directions staff
New Directions was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin, following the advice of Ezra Pound to “do something useful.” Since then, New Directions has published over 1500 …
We mourn the loss of the great Japanese writer, Yuko Tsushima (1947-2016), whose writing was “as potent and heady as a dry martini” (The Village Voice), and return to …
Stevie Smith laughed at ghoulish things. Disarmingly playful, her poetry is equal parts grief and glee. All the Poems gathers Smith’s line drawings together with her poems, …
**ENGLISH 366 ****Professor John Keene **Northwestern University Fall 2010 Course Description What do mean when we speak of an “avant-garde”? What constitutes an …
New Directions deeply mourns the loss of our beloved friend, C. D. Wright, the great, generous, and inspiring poet. We share the sorrow of her family, friends, and readers. Morning …
**White Linen ** A little movement stirs the linen, it’s in the garden, in the wind which comes, a marvel, from the sky. The sky is halfway still, half wild; half it is …
Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate the launch of Looking At Pictures at the New Museum last week. Special thanks to readers: Moyra Davey, Susan Bernofsky, Nathaniel …
All the pictures below are drawn from Looking At Pictures, a collection of Robert Walser’s joyful musings on art, which make most art criticism sound like highfalutin …
On December 10th, we reflected on the overwhelming response to The Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector translated by Katrina Dodson and edited by Benjamin Moser. A Hora de …
While watching a documentary on the German composer Hans Werner Henze, directed by Michael Blackwood, our publisher, Barbara Epler, spotted a familiar face: none other than Muriel …
This Minute this minute, a man carries a coffin down the street his buttons are open, he’s sweaty all over his feet tap the street splashed with starlight he sees the …
Thank you to everyone who made it to César Aira’s first ever US events in New York and Washington DC. For those of you who couldn’t be there, a photo essay of his NYC …
After Someone’s Death Once there was a shock that left behind a long pale glimmering comet’s tail. It contains us. It blurs TV images. It deposits itself as cold drops …
On his second-to-last day in New York City, the Museum of Modern Art invited César Aira to view drawings and etchings by Picasso not on display to the public. Aira’s short …
New Directions is delighted to announce that César Aira and László Krasznahorkai are both finalists for the Man Booker International Prize 2015! Our heartfelt congratulations to …
Photographs from Susan Howe and R. H. Quaytman’s keynote address at the New York Art Book Fair 2014 at MoMA PS1, Queens. Howe and Quaytman collaborated on the book Tom Tit …
As a teenager in the early 1960s, I wrote a short story called “But Not for Me," inspired by and written while listening to Ahmad Jamal’s album Live at the Pershing: But …
Friday 2 July 1999 Dear Barbara, Thank you so much for braving the Hollywood limelight for me & for your wonderful account of the proceedings. Had I been confronted with all …
Tracklist: Samia Gamal “Ay Ya Zein” [Oh Beautiful] (from the film Valley of the Kings) Um Kalthoum “Howa Sahih El-Hawa Ghallab” [Is It True That Love Is Irresistible?] Laila Murad …
“A Desk in Moscow” is an excerpt from Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days translated by Susan Bernofsky, which hit bookstores on Tuesday. The official book launch …
Last Tuesday at McNally Jackson, New Directions and The Poetry Society presented readings from two of America’s greatest living poets: Peter Cole and Susan Howe. The event …
One hundred years ago today, on October 30, 1914, James Laughlin—poet, heir to a steel fortune, and the founder of New Directions—was born. The story of New Directions begins when …
Today is the centenary of the birth of Dylan Thomas. Yesterday a live reading of Under Milk Wood, his “radio play for voices,” was performed in New York City. First …
The wonderful German writer Siegfried Lenz died yesterday in Hamburg. He was 88. Breon Mitchell, in his introduction to Lenz’s Selected Stories, remembers the writer’s …
Today is William Carlos Williams’s birthday. We celebrate with a look through the archives. (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) From Selected Poems of William Carlos Williams A …
For a packed audience last Tuesday night, Bidoun and New Directions co-hosted “The Authoritarian Turn: On the State of the Egyptian Intelligentsia” at New York …
In Brooklyn this past Tuesday, the alternative film venue Light Industry hosted a screening of The Driver’s Seat—Giuseppe Patroni Griffi’s 1974 Italian film adaptation …
In Stealth, a novel by the Egyptian writer Sonallah Ibrahim, a young boy wanders the serpentine streets of Cairo, imbimbing its sights and sounds, and peeping into the world of the …
Here, with the first chapter of Sonallah Ibrahim’s Stealth, are photographs by Don Church, taken in the 1950s while he was on assignment with the aviation branch of the United …
The PEN World Voices Festival culminates this weekend with some excellent events, including a discussion between Colm Toibin and Laszlo Krasznahorkai this Sunday afternoon. Below …
