Asymptote Podcast

Ever think of running away from mundane existence to join the circus? Imagine if, one day, after watching the circus, the circus director comes over to recruit you for an unusual role in the spectacle and pageantry you have just witnessed. This is what happens in Jurj Salem’s “At the Circus” from our Winter 2025 […]

Join us today for a heartfelt conversation with exiled Syrian author Jamal Saeed, author of the 2022 autobiography My Road from Damascus (ECW Press, Toronto). Podcast Editor Vincent Hostak recently sat down with Saeed, now based in Canada, to discuss his devastating short story, a highlight of our recent Summer 2024 edition. Written amidst the ongoing genocide in Gaza […]

To American poet and translator Dan Beachy-Quick, translations of Greek poets from the lyric and philosophical traditions are an opportunity to “use the eye to break apart the mind and remind us that we have a mouth to sing another’s song.” In this new Asymptote podcast episode, Beachy-Quick and Podcast Editor Vincent Hostak discuss the ongoing resonance of these songs in […]

In today’s thrilling conversation with author and translator Matthew Landrum, Podcast Editor Vincent Hostak explores the compelling poetry of Anna Malan Jógvansdóttir and the renaissance of Faroese literature as spotlighted in Asymptote’s Spring issue. Nine Faroese authors from multiple generations are represented in our Special Feature organized in partnership with FarLit. The showcase, which readers can access here, affords a rare glimpse […]

The third Asymptote Podcast episode for 2024 explores a chapter in the life of Vladimir Nabokov during his time in the United States (where he became a citizen in 1945). With his spouse, Vera, and son, Dimitri, he travelled across the America West at the dawn of the mid-nineteenth century. It’s estimated that Nabokov chalked […]

In the second podcast episode centering on contributors to Asymptote’s landmark 50th issue, Danish-Norwegian author Kristin Vego joins Podcast Editor Vincent Hostak in conversation. Her story, “All Things Lovely,” as translated by Jennifer Russell, represents her debut in the English language. Vego’s story also arrives at a moment when Norwegian literature is receiving global attention with last […]

Esteemed translator David Unger joins our new Podcast Editor Vincent Hostak for a conversation with readings of the poetry of Jaime Barrios Carillo. Born in Guatemala City in 1954 and living in Stockholm since 1981, Carrillo is known principally as a writer and columnist. His Two Poems from the Spanish Language volume Ángeles sin dios (Angels Without […]

It’s Steve Lehman’s final episode as our podcast editor, and we’re going out with a bang: a timely interview with the Ethiopian writer and translator Bethlehem Attfield. In this episode, Bethlehem talks with Steve about co-translating Mulugeta Alebachew’s short story “Heaven Without Prickly Pears” for our Summer 2021 issue. She also discusses the lack of representation of […]

Summer has arrived (in the northern hemisphere, anyway), and today we’re heading to Iceland! In this episode, Icelandic writer Kári Tulinius chats with podcast editor Steve Lehman about growing up in Iceland, the advantages of a tight-knit literary community, and how writing poetry is part of what it means to be human. Then, Kári reads one of his poems published […]

Today on the show, the award-winning author and translator Padma Viswanathan joins podcast editor Steve Lehman to talk about her love for Brazilian literature, the connection between writing and translating, and how translation helps her form an even closer relationship to Portuguese. Afterwards, stick around to hear an excerpt from the short story “The Woman […]

Join podcast editor Steve Lehman for a conversation with current contributor Anton Hur on his journey as a literary translator and his “Fictional Notes toward an Essay on Translation” that was published under the aegis of our “Brave New World Literature Feature” spotlighting the unique relationship between authors and their translators. Stay until the end to hear writer, editor, […]

In this episode, podcast editor Steve Lehman chats with acclaimed poet, essayist, and novelist Hiromi Itō about her development as a feminist writer, the importance of the environment in her life, and the moving experience of reading her own work translated into another language. Plus, hear an excerpt from Itō’s essay “Living Trees and Dying […]

In tandem with the release of our milestone 40th issue, new podcast host Steve Lehman speaks with the Booker International Prize-winning translator Michele Hutchison about her work on Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s The Discomfort of Evening, curating this issue’s Special Feature on Dutch literature, and more. Plus, a poetry reading by contributor Mustafa Stitou in the original Dutch, followed by […]

Podcast Editor Layla Benitez-James reports back from the Unamuno Poetry Festival in Madrid with an excerpt from a panel she moderated, titled “TransAtlantic: Translation as Bridge and Compulsion.” She also explores the dynamic lecture on translation given by Jorge Vessel, poet and translator of Desperate Literature: A Bilingual Anthology—a book highlighting, rather than what is lost, that which is found and gained through the art of […]

During Madrid’s Year of Lorca, which commemorates the centenary of the poet’s arrival to the city, podcast editor Layla Benitez-James speaks with Rebecca Seiferle, whose brilliant essay on Lorca translations appears in Into English. A multi-award winning poet and noted translator of César Vallejo and other Spanish language poets, Seiferle is deeply passionate about teaching and […]

Podcast editor Dominick Boyle speaks with translator Olivia Hellewell, whose stellar translation of an excerpt from Katja Perat’s The Masochist earned her first place in the fiction category of our 2019 Close Approximations Contest and $1,000 in prizes. Set in an impeccably researched past, the novel gives Leopold von Sacher-Masoch—the (in)famously eccentric aristocrat after which masochism […]

“I felt myself in translation all the time.” Podcast Editor Layla Benitez-James sits down via Google Hangouts with poet and translator Aaron Coleman in this third and final installment of interviews inspired by John Keene’s essay Translating Poetry, Translating Blackness. In October’s conversation with Keene and our previous podcast with Lawrence Schimel, we explored the more radical social possibilities of […]

On this episode of the Asymptote Podcast, we dive once more into the archives to tune into some of the riches that Asymptote has offered readers over the last 30 (now 31!) issues. Pick up where Podcast Editor Dominick Boyle left off in his last episode to listen to recordings from 2014 up to the present issue. Hear […]

“All art, all artistic production, entails the base of this word translation, a carrying over…” In this latest edition of the Asymptote Podcast, we sit down with translator and writer John Keene on the heels of the tremendous news of his MacArthur Genius Award. Author of Annotations and Counternarratives, Keene was longlisted for the 2015 Best Translated Book […]

In celebration of Asymptote’s milestone 30th issue, Podcast Editor Dominick Boyle dives into the archives to uncover some of his favorite recordings from the archive. In this episode, he revisits poetry set to music in Tamil and Spanish from Aandaal and Enrique Winter, and snarky telephone conversations with a whole city by way of voice-mail […]