Saturday, November 14, 2020

On Judging the Italian Prose in Translation Award

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This past year, I was a judge for the Italian Prose in Translation Award, given each year by the industry association known as ALTA (the Ame...
Saturday, September 05, 2020

What I'm not writing about (for Brevity)

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My father, age 84, is ill and for the most part, I am not writing about it. I don’t  want  to write about it, beyond forcing myself to recor...
Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Italian diary, May 2017 (re-post)

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I’m back in the “in-between” world, the space where sentences begin in one language and end in another.  It’s a world that I inhabited for m...
Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Italy on my mind (more than usual)

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I keep thinking about Italy, about being in Italy, about walking the streets of Italy.  It's the thing I want to do most right no...
Saturday, May 16, 2020

Do good work (c/o Melanie Vugich's Facebook feed)

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Thursday, May 14, 2020

My students are still keeping a journal

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As I mentioned in a previous post, I asked my students to keep what I called a Coronavirus Journal when our course went from live lessons t...
Sunday, April 19, 2020

Poetry translations published by Asymptote Journal

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Asymptote Journal has published four poems by Edith Bruck that I translated from Italian. It provides me with a much-needed respite sinc...
Tuesday, April 07, 2020

"Prima Pagina" -- an ode to my favorite Italian radio show

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When I launched this blog, I wrote to reflect my own joy in knowing Italian, studying Italian and speaking Italian and also to inspire tha...
Saturday, March 28, 2020

Coronavirus Journal ... for the Brevity Nonfiction Blog

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I've asked my students at Wesleyan to keep a coronavirus journal -- a diary of their days as they navigate what are truly unprecedente...
Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Review: A GIRL RETURNED by Donatella Di Pietrantonio

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Finally, my review of one of the best Italian novels of 2019 has run! You can find my whole review of A GIRL RETURNED   here on the Kenyo...
Monday, March 16, 2020

From the Leo Journal: ROAR!

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Feb. 22, 2017 2:17 p.m. While he plays by himself, I overhear him as he says again and again one word: “Roar!” He loves to pretend he’...
Sunday, March 08, 2020

This one's for Brenda and Eddie (or post-Italy blues)

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Driving home in a trance from JFK, some 20 hours after leaving our hotel in Rome, Mike prowled the radio dial for anything that would keep...
Monday, February 10, 2020

Octopus arms

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Dec. 31, 2017 -- From the Leo journal: “It would be great if people could live on Earth forever --” *Pause* “-- and have octopus...
Wednesday, January 08, 2020

Jhumpa Lahiri and the Rapture of Italian

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I am not a full-time literary critic, which has one particular advantage: I get to choose which books I review. And I jumped at the chance...
Sunday, December 29, 2019

The Year in Reading (What I actually read)

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I set myself a goal of reading  50 books  this year (almost to dare myself to read that many), with the idea of starting off with a set of...
Monday, December 16, 2019

The Year in Writing (and Translation) -- 2019

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The year -- in writing, in living, in anything -- never quite turns out how you planned it, right? Sad to say, I rarely get all the writ...
Monday, December 02, 2019

Time for the panettone (redux)

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I've always thought about  panettone  at this time of the year, even back before you could find the little Italian Christmas loaves ever...
Thursday, November 21, 2019

Dear Marie Kondo -- from the archives!

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Dear Marie Kondo, I know that your book has helped many people pare down, and since a relocation has consumed me for much of 2017 – m...
Tuesday, November 12, 2019

After the translation conference

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I study the program, zeroing in on the participants' bios. The section where the gold is hidden. That's what I do after the conf...
Monday, November 04, 2019

A map of my places

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May 2019 I was out for a walk the other day before an early editing shift and I strolled over to the old cemetery -- the small one, the on...