Articles and updates from the New Directions staff
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: …
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 Um Kalthoum “Howa Sahih El-Hawa Ghallab” [Is It True That Love Is Irresistible?] Laila Murad “Men Al Qalb Lel-Qalb Rasool” Heart …
“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 …
How fitting that an evening celebrating Muriel Spark saw a downpour so relentless that umbrellas were useless. Last night, brave Spark lovers came together to remember the writer …
If you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing László Krasznahorkai read from AnimalInside in a darkened room, illuminated by Max Neumann’s “dog-beast” paintings, we …
Events in Sydney, Boston, Michigan and New York! Friday, April 11: Translator Chris Andrews (Roberto Bolaño, César Aira) will participate on the panel “Translating the Boundaries …
Join Boston University for a reading and conversation with Jenny Erpenbeck. One of Germany’s rising literary stars, Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. Her grandfather, …
In the English fairytale “Tom Tit Tot” — an English variant of the German tale “Rumpelstilzchen” — a King marries a peasant maiden whom he believes has the …
Join New Directions and BOMB for a reading by Japanese author Takashi Hiraide, author of the New York Times Best Seller, The Guest Cat. Called “careful, elegantly, …
Join Peter Cole, “one of the handful of authentic poets of his own American generation” (Harold Bloom), for a reading from his fourth collection of poetry The Invention …
Roberto Bolaño’s reputation has become that of a writer’s writer, but he might also be called a writer’s reader—for his wide, absorbent, Borgesian literary erudition—or maybe even …
New Directions has a long record of working with acclaimed and noteworthy up-and-coming book designers, like Rachel Adam. She’s been working for Rodrigo Corral Design Studio for …
The French author Margueritte Yourcenar, in an unlikely biography of Yukio Mishima, wrote that the Japanese writer had long “envisioned a certain kind of death and made it,” and …
Clarice Lispector interviewed with English subtitles. Watch at Converstational Reading.
“The deceptively simple plot plunges you — what seems like effortlessly — into a world of art, philosophy and the mysterious nature of our ties to other living things.” …
