If you haven’t yet voted in the Society of Authors elections, don’t forget to post your vote this week!!!

'We get to write a book again, try to imagine what motivated and prompted a writer to write what they did, what mood they were in, what tone they were going for'
In our I wish I'd made section, @jencalleja.bsky.social on a book she's always wanted to translate
www.draughtjournal.com/article/bein...

#Malta: In memory of Daphne Caruana Galizia, press freedom and journalists’ groups call on authorities to adopt a National Action Plan on Media Freedom and Journalist Safety.

Read more ⬇️

www.pen-international.org/news/malta-i...

If you haven’t yet voted in the Society of Authors elections, don’t forget to post your vote this week!!!

Congratulations to Dorothee Elmiger for winning the German Book Prize 2025!

You can read my sample translation from her winning novel *Die Holländerinnen* here www.new-books-in-german.com/wp-content/u...

*FIFTEEN THOUSAND JOBS LOST*.
If this were in a sector in which the PM could go and do a photoshoot looking like One Of The People, we’d have had a government intervention by now.

More than 20 independent publishing houses – including Bluemoose Books, Tilted Axis Press and Influx Press – have written an open letter calling for the trade to “work together to ensure the longevity of the UK’s independent presses” as they face an “existential crisis” 👇

❤️

" I will help make sure the way translators are chosen for jobs is as fair as possible."
Jen Calleja- author 'Fair'

On raising issues on integrity & fair working conditions for translators
#LanguageMatters
Thanks for the inspiration & great evening
@jencalleja.bsky.social
at Collected Books

Thanks so much Clare, very kind!

😂 so true Stu

Annual reminder that without literary translators, most Nobel Prize-winning authors couldn’t be read by the committee/readers, so celebrate them too. Congrats @ottiliemulzet.bsky.social et al! This isn’t taking away from the author, it’s adding recognition of the miracle/labour/skill of translation.

Sorry to use you as a dumping ground, but I just talked to a guy who’s thinking about getting into literary translation by “using software” and post-editing. Because it would be too time consuming the long way. He was also unimpressed by my suggestion that good translation takes practice.

I am saying once again that the Conservative attack on the Arts is because they are incredibly envious of artists who they perceive as a group that has “too much” cultural power, a type of influence Conservatives crave but will never have because they’re anti-intellectuals with no imagination.

I wrote about how literary translation gives you the chance to write a book you wish you’d written for the first issue of @draughtjournal.bsky.social draughtjournal.com

Draught is now live!
www.draughtjournal.com
Issue 1.1.1 with contributions by Glenn Adamson, Jen Calleja, Don Mee Choi, Mark Cousins, Daisy Lafarge, Mark Manders, Rosalind Nashashibi, Lisa Robertson, Christina Tudor-Sideri and Francesca Wade

Mysterious! And great! Might you be up for trying to find a couple of run-on lines in it over the next few days? I basically have a couple of lines in German, which I’ve translated into English, so it would be looking for lines *kind of like* those lines? No worries if that sounds not very fun.

Goliarda Sapienza: The Art of Joy, translated by Anne Milano Appel, Penguin UK, 2013 / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013

Does anyone have a copy of The Art of Joy (the English translation of L'arte della gioia) by Goliarda Sapienza? I’m looking for a quote for a translation I’m working on. Thanks!

Penultimate FAIR book tour event this Wednesday in Durham at Collected Books collectedbooks.co.uk/collections/...

Then there was the famous exchange between Bill Gates and Terry Pratchett in 1996(?) when clearly only one of them understood where human nature would take the Internet, and it wasn't Mr. Microsoft.

We are delighted to announce the #GoldsmithsPrize2025 shortlist.

Congratulations to our six brilliant novelists!

Find out more about the shortlist: www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-p...

In food history, we notice how super-refined foods--gelatin, vienna sausage, white bread--lose class and become horrifying once they become industrialized. Suddenly, fingermarks in bread dough demonstrate skill, not clumsiness.

Post-chatGPT, I'm feeling this about writing. Smoothness feels gross.

Final three events for the FAIR book tour - see you soon Birmingham, Durham, London!