It looks like I never got around to finalizing and publishing my translation of "Memories." I guess that's just another one of those things that disappear!

You'll find my translation of "Palast der Republik" in @michiganquarterly.bsky.social (sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2019/11/...), and "Cheese and Socks", "Mietzel," "Warsaw Ghetto," and "Youth" in The Brooklyn Rail (intranslation.brooklynrail.org/german/from-...).

to compare different translations of the same work, I attach them here. I'm sure Kurt's done great things with these essays - and I'm sure his translations will differ quite a bit from mine, since we're not the same person and translations by different people always differ! You'll find my

🧵This week, New Directions will publish a collection of essays by Jenny Erpenbeck, Things That Disappear, translated by Kurt Beals, a translator for whom I have the highest respect. Since this is a book I translated chunks of 15 years ago for magazines, and since I know some of you enjoy getting

Civility Is a Fantasy www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/o...

Grateful to my colleagues next door at Barnard, Professors Castelli and Callahan of the Barnard @aaup.org, and brilliant writer Jhumpa Lahiri for these clear and principled words. We all know what it means to support real freedom of speech on and off campus.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/o...

Can you help the Ali Forney Center provide meals for unhoused LGBTQ+ kids in NYC? Just $5 buys a meal for two young people. Please pitch in if you can! serve.aliforneycenter.org/twilight-twi...

I'm looking forward to this event tonight with the great Katrine Øgaard Jensen and some exciting emerging writers you'll be hearing more about soon www.scandinaviahouse.org/sh/lectures-literary/writing-the-world-from-copenhagen-to-nyc/

I was so delighted to be asked to review Han Kang's new novel We Do Not Part, translated into English by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, for Korean Literature Now. It's a stunning book, beautifully translated. klwave.or.kr/klw/magazine...

As the new semester starts, I want to keep the focus on the ongoing genocide in Gaza (and US complicity in it).

Honored to have the chance to co-write this with another parent whose child was suspended from Barnard/Columbia for protest activity.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

We built a calculator that doesn't work, but don't worry, it's also a plagiarism machine that will tell you to kill yourself. It runs on the world's oceans and costs 10 trillion dollars.

Excited to host the inimitable Jennifer Croft at Columbia next month. To attend, you MUST send in your RSVP as specified in the event description 48 hours in advance, otherwise you won't be allowed to access campus under current restrictions. In-person only.
arts.columbia.edu/events/being...

So looking forward to this!

Announcing the Center for the Art of Translation's DAY OF TRANSLATION 2025! Join us on 9/18 at The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, NY. Registration open now for our 12-5 pm panels & tickets available for Jhumpa Lahiri and Katie Kitamura's 6 pm keynote.

Full announcement ➡️ mailchi.mp/catranslatio...

Defections matter:

“All authoritarian regimes rely on support from key institutions in society … When members of these pillars stop cooperating with the regime […] it becomes difficult or impossible for autocrats to stay in power.”
@mariajstephan.bsky.social

Defections matter:

“All authoritarian regimes rely on support from key institutions in society … When members of these pillars stop cooperating with the regime […] it becomes difficult or impossible for autocrats to stay in power.” @mariajstephan.bsky.social

www.justsecurity.org/113995/colle...

The Swiss newspaper Der Bund that printed Robert Walser's first poems in 1898 just reviewed the German translation of my Walser biography 🔄 www.derbund.ch/robert-walse...

Everything was fine until Trump decided to unleash violent raids w/o grounds in elementary schools, shopping areas, & peaceful public spaces.

ICE then illegally blocked Members of Congress entry into the facilities they are disappearing people into, escalating the situation.

Let’s start there.

It is 100% carrying water for the opposition to participate in this collective delusion that Dems for some reason need to answer for every teen who throws a rock rather than hold the Trump admin accountable for intentionally creating chaos and breaking the law to stoke violence.

They are in charge.

I will be damned if I allow a bunch of Confederate-waving January 6th apologists give the American people a lecture on flag waving.

There is ZERO reason to enter an argument about patriotism with people who still worship traitors to America 150+ years later.

They. Are. Breaking. The. Law.

Good to know one of the U.S. President's main influencers on national security policy is calling for actual genocide (65 mil is the total Latino population of the U.S.)

US contractors say their colleagues are firing live ammunition as Palestinians seek food in #Gaza.

The AP has obtained videos of a food-distribution site in Gaza and interviewed two American contractors working there.

apnews.com/article/pale...

So that’s a Sikh activist in Canada, a Sikh activist in Pakistan and a Sikh activist in the UK, all murdered. A fourth, a Sikh activist in the US, survived an assassination attempt.

We gonna pretend Modi isn’t ordering hits on dissidents outside of India?

TFW your biography of a great German-language author gets translated into German, and you're waiting nervously to see what German-language readers will make of it, and the first article finally comes out, and it's a rave review! www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/rober...