Author Archives: Ann Kjellberg

Borges on the English tradition of versifying in one’s sleep

In Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum [Church History] of the English People, Bede talks about the first Christian poet of England, of whom only a few lines have been preserved. His name was Caedmon and his story is quite strange; we will return to it later when we talk about Coleridge and Stevenson. Here’s the story: […]

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“On the Death of the Author,” by Álvaro Enrigue

Some stories are, seemingly, impossible to tell. It must be at least ten years since I took a trip through California, and since then I’ve been trying to write, without the least success, the story of a particular grand finale: it’s the story of Ishi, a Yahi Indian who was discovered in his aboriginal condition […]

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“Summer Voices,” by John Banville

—Are you coming or are you just going to stand there all day? He turned. The girl stood between the two ancient bicycles, a saddle held in each of her small hands. —I’m coming, he grunted. They mounted and rode slowly down to the gate, where he halted while the girl swung carelessly out into […]

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“Milano–Roma–Palermo,” by Tim Parks

I’m scarcely sure what nationality I really am these days. All I know is that for the past thirty years I’ve lived and worked in northern Italy, and like most of the people around me I know little of the South, though the South is always present to us as an idea—a bad one, for […]

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“Before Arbour Hill,” by Anakana Schofield

Before Arbour Hill there were three of them. There was his mother. A semi-detached, in an unremarkable cul-de-sac, housed them, with souvenirs from a holiday in Portugal on the mantlepiece. Biscuits in the tin, sheets in the hot press, and holy water inside the front door. They were looking for one suspect in connection with […]

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Not Fair: Artist Andrea Bowers Writes to the Organizers of the Frieze Art Fair

The artist Andrea Bowers this week sent this letter to the organizers of the Frieze Art Fair, which opens today on Randall’s Island in New York City. Bowers’ great cardboard monuments to American workers are on view at the Fair, in the booths of the Susan Velmeitter and Kaufmann Repetto Galleries, and are featured in […]

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“Karel,” from “3 Kinds of Exile,” a new play by John Guare

THE ACTOR appears and talks directly to us: This is a story that a friend of mine told to me a few years ago. I was sitting in his house in England. I was going through some personal troubles and a solution to them stymied me. I brought my bag of woes to him. He […]

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“this has no title,” by James Kelman

Then the man coming along the aisle, a big heavy fellow, he sat down next to me. I knew he would. I had made the space. He noticed I had and nearly smiled, just how he looked around the eyes like it was almost a smile and hoped I would notice it. A recognition of […]

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Anakana Schofield wins Amazon.ca First Novel Award

Last year at AWP we stumbled past the booth of Dan Wells’s smart and original Canada independent, Biblioasis, which had been recommended to us by those clever guys over at Dalkey. Dan described his operation and then pressed into our arms, with an ardent fire in his eyes, a copy of Anakana Schofield’s freshly minted […]

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James Kelman in New York

One of the writers who most consistently amazes us, James Kelman, is arriving in New York next week and will be reading with Little Star at our beloved St. Mark’s Bookshop on Wednesday, May 1. Please join us! Take the opportunity not only to hear Kelman’s extraordinary prose in its native Glaswegian, but to buy […]

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