EDWARD GAUVIN

Saturday 1/31 at 4pm at Cake Shop, 152 Ludlow St, NYC btwn. Stanton & Rivington. I’ll be reading with Jon McMillan (he has a story out now in the New England Review!) and Micaela Morrissette (a senior editor at Conjunctions who won a Pushcart and a best american fantasy award this past year). Scott Geiger was instrumental in setting me up for this reading up with his New School buddies Jim and Jason, who run the Enclave reading series; huge thanks to all three. Apparently, Micaela Morrissette named her hedgehog after Scott’s first published story, “The Pursuit of Artemisia Guile” in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 16 (July 2005). If you watch this site, further info and reader bios should eventually get posted there.

Come one and all!

Charlito, of Indie Spinner Rack fame, and co-publisher of what is to date my only published comics work, has produced a handsome handmade card game from the natural effervescence of his irrepressible creative spirit and sheer infectious joy at our soon-to-be President. I am egregiously late about notifying the masses of it, but when I saw notice posted on my friend GB Tran’s blog, I thought Duh, why not be a copycat. I’m still in time for inauguration. Please go buy it. Feed Charlito.

www.obamacardgame.com

With apologies to Andi Watson, Benjamin Parzybok, and Small Beer Press.

• “Heavenly Father, be not with our sins against us, but with us against our sins. And when Your thoughts rise in our soul, let it be each time to show us not the extent of our errors, but that of Your pardon, nor how we go astray, but how You shall save us.” Can any Kierkegaard readers identify the source and perhaps standard English translation of this quote (which I have rendered from the French)? It is one of the most beautiful things I have recently read.
• The Southern Review rejects a Châteaureynaud short story with the longest and second nicest editor letter this translator has ever received, in what is unarguably the most perfect penmanship. They will be getting another submission, those lucky folks!
• Last year’s translation masterpiece by yours truly, Dr. Frédéric Saldmann’s Wash Your Hands!, has been available online and in stores for a month now. I’m sure it topped your holiday list.

by Dr. Frédéric Saldmann

UPDATED 11/30: video footage, thanks to Sunday Salon co-hostess Nita Noveno, of me reading part of G.O.-C.’s short story “The Pavilion and the Linden” (Le kiosque et le tilleul), an earlier version of which is available online at The Cafe Irreal.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf9hhkzfGAk&eurl=http://www.sundaysalon.com/video&feature=player_embedded]

A quick and all-too-close-to-the-date note to say I’ll be giving a reading of translations and my own writing at the Sunday Salon in Williamsburg this weekend, with three other writers: short-storyist Leni Zumas, psychologist-memoirist Daniel Tomasulo, and African-American novelist Kim Coleman Foote. It starts at 7pm, at the Stain Bar. (L to Grand, then 1 block west. Stain Bar is located at 766 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211. Bar opens at 5 p.m. 718.387.7840.)

To share some good news: the French fabulist whose work I’ll be reading, Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, just won the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire for his latest novel, L’Autre rive, at the Utopiales festival in Nantes (kind of to Euro sci-fi what Angouleme is to comics. Kelly Link just won the same prize in the Best Foreign Story Collection category for an edition of stories selected from her two American collections—Yay!)

And two new publications: Châteaureynaud’s story “The Only Mortal” will appear in Dec.-Jan. issue of The Brooklyn Rail, and his story “The Denham Inheritance” has been accepted for publication in a forthcoming volume of British quarterly Postscripts. Thank you, editors!

In a recent letter, the author offered his congratulations on our recent election.

A future post on the novel itself is pending.

Hope you can make it!

A more formal version française after the jump: » Read the rest of this entry «

I have been alerted to this strange occurrence. I think I am flattered; certainly I am glad the story has been read 156 times. I am as yet uncertain how to respond and have refrained from leaving a comment, or notifying other parties who may perhaps be concerned. I was, after all, credited, as was the author, but AGNI Online, where it first appeared, was not, nor was the French publisher. I like to think I have a pirate heart, and if it were wholly up to me… but isn’t that the beginning of every excuse? The thought that someone out there is reading this, of all stories, on a cell phone, frankly tickles. All press is good press. Thank you, minicooper.

This on the heels of the tremendous news that Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s short story “Icarus Saved from the Skies” has been picked up for publication by Fantasy & Science Fiction. Gordon Van Gelder, we love you!

…and I’m a late poster, as usual. Grossman, Jull Costa, Venuti, Chris Andrews, Marilyn Hacker, Jessica Cohen, Alexis Levitin… what’s not to like?

Many sincere thanks to Franck Bessone and Kurt Bodden for graciously reading the excerpt from Patrick Besson’s Les Freres de la Consolation in the original French and my translation at the release party. Wish I could’ve been there!

STRANGE HARBORS

The 15th anniversary volume of TWO LINES World Writing in Translation
Edited by John Biguenet and Sidney Wade

Strange Harbors

» Read the rest of this entry «

This last is referenced in a nicely detailed account of a manga fest in Germany.

This brief text, posted here shortly after it was translated on 1/15, will appear, along with other selected texts by Roland Jaccard, in a 2009 issue of Absinthe: New European Writing, thanks to editor Dwayne Hayes, in a slightly altered form, thanks to a generous read by Barbara Harshav.  The author was kind enough to send me, in thanks, a copy of his latest book, a musing on Louise Brooks. I confess to not understanding the French fetish for Louise Brooks, which approaches their national love of Jerry Lewis, and remains less famous only because that silent actress hasn’t the household-name value of the comedian… perhaps this book will enlighten me.