This week I will be publishing a selection of contemporary Latvian writing in B O D Y. The issue starts with a couple poems by Inga Pizāne. There will also selections of poetry from Anna Belkavska and Semyon Khanin. A short story, “Victory” by Jānis Joņevs rounds out the week’s writing. Latvian Lit Week: Inga […]
The latest issue of The Continental is out and includes my essay, “Fatherlessland”, a work about my father’s death, Prague as a city and film set, Nazis past and present, and a few other topics as well. The issue also includes an interview with Fran Lebowitz, a ghost story by film director Abel Ferrara, an […]
“Ivan lay sprawled out in the snow, his limbs twisted. That’s what you look like when you fall out of the sky. Not like an angel or even a bird, but like a man never meant to be airborne.” from my short story “The Flight of Ivan Ivanovich” in issue 72 of Mexico’s Ofi Press. […]
“As soon as her mother turned away to do some other chore, the girl tore off pieces of dough and made them into little figures. She lined them up in front of her, stabbed them with a fork and groaned as if she were they; she chopped off one’s head and made the others play […]
“It contained the body of a roughly four-year-old boy. That in itself is astounding, since we’re talking about a time frame of about twenty-four thousand years ago, as evidenced by carbon-14 dating of other finds from the same area, but then came Professor Buttler’s reaction, which… his reaction threw us for a loop. You’ve probably […]
The Summer Issue of B O D Y, marking the magazine’s 10th year in existence, is out. Besides the usual mix of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and reviews, the issue includes the editors’ list of their favorite work published over the past decade. Stay updated with the Summer Issue here Read my list of my five […]
“Yes. The Mortkowitz funeral. I remember now. That was definitely yesterday.” Then, as if I’d suddenly turned radioactive, he spun on his heels and rushed away, leaving me to simmer in the soup of my bewilderment and humiliation. I felt that everyone was now looking at me, happy to have their attention momentarily diverted from […]
AGNI magazine has published “Dispatches from Ukraine“, a series of writings and reflections by mostly Ukrainian writers, filmmakers, journalists, professors and more. It starts off with a powerful piece by novelist Yuri Andrukhovych, “After Bucha”: However, what we see testifies to dehumanization. The population of Russia successfully dehumanized itself. This is an anti-world. This is […]
Translated from the Russian by Mariya Gusev I wasn’t expecting to be this scared. It was a physiological reaction I could not control, even with all of my resolve. As soon as we got there and took our place, my knees began to tremble. This was terribly embarrassing. And I could do nothing to stop […]
Translated from the Russian by Mariya Gusev #end_of_the_world_diary I teach at a literary seminar. A colleague wrote that a student had just given her a story where a rocket hits a TV tower. And a student gave me a story where two people were fleeing a nuclear explosion that had engulfed Moscow. I envy those […]
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