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D. P. Snyder

@dpsnyder_writer

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Writer & translator. México-Spain-Caribe-Colombia. Finder of literary masterpieces. Always #seekingapublisher. Opinions mine.

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Today, I wrote about my friend Parisa Saranj's new translation of Iranian-French writer Nasim Vahabi's brilliant novel, "I Am Not a Novel" (Keruanserai, 2026). This story and literary aesthetic are made for this moment—and a little classic is born.

Find a link to purchase it and read more about it on my Substack, "Silence, Exile, and Cunning": https://tinyurl.com/mvkjs8pn.

#ReviewTranslations #Translations #BookReviews #Censorship #Women #literarynovels #Iran

[Photo: ©Parisa Saranj] by @dpsnyder_writer

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

— W. H. Auden ("September 1, 1939" written upon the German invasion of Poland and the beginning of WWII)

#VOTE by @dpsnyder_writer

How about a little Halloween horror from Mexico, publishers?

Today I'm thrilled to highlight a title: THE VISITOR by Alberto Chimal (Planeta, Mexico, 2022).

Summary:

THE VISITOR explores the eerie events that ensue when timid Gabriela, a student from a small Mexican town, moves to Mexico City in 1972, a period marked by political repression following the student movement and the Corpus Christi Thursday massacre.

Gabriela arrives at the prestigious National Autonomous University of Mexico to study accounting, as her parents wish, but ends up getting involved with an experimental theater group led by the charismatic director Teodoro. When she discovers that one of the group’s former actresses (and Teodoro's former love interest) disappeared on the day of the student massacre, she becomes suspicious. That's when the nightmares begin, along with strange phenomena that seem to be visitations from a female entity seeking justice. The plot thickens when the angry ghost enters Gabriela's body— and refuses to leave. But who is she?

THE VISITOR combines supernatural horror and psychological thriller with a social critique of machismo, femicide, classism, and violence against women in Mexican society. The gothic literary genius of Chimal, Mexico's premier contemporary author of uncanny and fantastic fiction, meets Josh Malerman's Incidents Around the House (@delreybooks, 2024).

Length: 278 pages

Author: Alberto Chimal (Toluca, México, 1970) won the National Short Story Book Award in 2002 with Estos son los días (These Are the Days) and the Colima Prize in 2014 with Manda fuego (Let Fire Rain Down). His novel La torre y el jardín (The Tower and the Garden, 2012) was shortlisted for the Rómulo Gallegos International Award, one of the most prestigious in the Spanish language; and his YA dystopian novel La noche en la zona M (Night at the M Zone) won the International Award from Banco del Libro in 2021. Chimal made history as the first Mexican writer to write an official Batman story, Batman: The World, for DC Comics (2021).

I would be delighted to get going on the translation of this gripping novel! Drop me a line. #horror #literature #Mexico @planetalibrosmx by @dpsnyder_writer

With Emily Gladhart on the sunny tasting terrace at beautiful @wintershillwine in Oregon’s glorious Dundee Hills. I spent an enchanted afternoon with the Gladhart family vineyard with Emily, my friend @amaliaglad and her brother Russell, who heads this family business, the experience enhanced by peak fall colors, a spectacular view, and delightful wine, which I warmly recommend. Thank you, friends! 🍷#wine #vineyards #DundeeValley #pinot #chardonnaywine by @dpsnyder_writer

Last night I had the privilege of occupying the same stage with translator-writers Amalia Gladhart (@amaliaglad, far left), Amanda Powell, and Karen McPherson. We read our original writing and translations and discussed our writing/translation practices and how the authors we translate seep into our thinking and literary work.

Enormous thanks to Scott and Wren, owners of @tsunamibooks in Eugene, Oregon, for providing a beautiful atmosphere for us and the audience. Special thanks to Amalia, who organized this marvelous post-ALTA (@littranslate) poetry and prose reading and conversation.

Support local, independent bookstores! (photo: Nathalie Hester)

#events #translation #Eugene #bookstores #poetry #writers by @dpsnyder_writer

A beautiful thing happened today.

I have applied for this grant several times and was never long- or short-listed. Now, here I am on the Granum Foundation short list with Mexican author @ethelkrauze_k's wonderful novel Samovar! Thank you, @granum_foundation, from the bottom of my heart.

Congratulations to all the short-listed writers and their authors!

#grants @translation #Mexico #hope by @dpsnyder_writer

My thanks to Dr. Marcos Pico Rentería for making me aware of the podcast "A Book & Its Author" produced by Marc Oxby, who, at Marcos's recommendation, interviewed Mexican author Alberto Chimal about his book (and my translation of) his two made-for-Twitter episodic mini-fictions, initially published in Mexico as "Historia Siniestra" by Editorial Cuadrivio in 2015 and republished in my translation as "Scary Story" by @pamenarpress in 2023.

I enjoyed being quoted back to myself when Marc read from my translator's note: "Seek your own apparitions, draw your own conclusions." That advice I offer is at the core of how to read Chimal's work and the openness and collaborative aspect of his literary aesthetic.

I am proud to have worked with Alberto as his translator and dearly hope to collaborate with him again. A crucial part of Alberto's aesthetic is how he invites readers to engage differently with his texts, as Cortázar did in "Hopscotch" and as Borges did in his short stories, to take a more active role in finding meaning and becoming conscious agents in the creation of the narrative.

Alberto's writing deserves much more attention from U.S. publishers; he is one of the most important fiction writers of our time, in Mexico or anywhere, a writer who, more than most, is crafting a literary aesthetic for our unstable times.

LISTEN to Marc's interview with great contemporary Mexican writer and my friend Alberto Chimal here: https://lnkd.in/eNq-KCfa

#literature #Mexico # AlbertoChimal #translation #Horror by @dpsnyder_writer

I've been doing a little Substacking lately. I invite you to join me at "Silence, Exile, and Cunning," where I was inspired this week to meditate on my visceral and spiritual approach to translating "Las extraterrestres" by Colombian polymath @julianaborr.
(photo: ©J. Borrero)

Read here: https://tinyurl.com/2t62y7y8

#Colombia #literature #novels #translation #feminism #performanceart by @dpsnyder_writer

1.
If the sea should become a mulberry grove / it wouldn’t mean much to me.

2.
"People see Pickup and call him crazy.
'He's just a fool with a broom,' they say.
I don't mind their laughter, nor do I care for their praise.
When they look at me, they see a mirror—
They are only laughing at their own reflection."

Shi-te, a.k.a. "Pickup", a Zen Buddhist monk (8th to 9th c. C.E.)

#poetry #china #zen #water #tree by @dpsnyder_writer

Today, I offer my Spanish translation of Tibetan poet Tsering Woeser’s “Absent, not Absent,” based on Ian Boyden's English-language version, to honor Nepal's September 7 national day of mourning for victims of the massive landslide at the Nepal-Tibet border. I am grateful to editors Daniel Simon and Michelle Johnson at @worldlittoday for their warm hearts and tireless dedication to world literature and the people who make it.

Poet and activist Tsering Woeser is one of the most prominent public intellectuals in China who is discussing the colonization and destruction of her native Tibet, and one of the most respected Tibetan voices in the world.

This collaboration came about after I heard actor @richardgere read a fragment of Ian's translation of Woeser's poem right here on Instagram. I was inspired to reach out to Ian for permission to translate his English version, originally published in @wwborders in 2019. Woeser's original poem in Chinese was dedicated to his holiness the Dalai Lama on his eighty-second birthday (July 6, 2017). Now, it lives and breathes in Spanish, too. Our collaboration is a mystical and wonderful one.

You can read "Ausente, no ausente" and "Absent, not Absent" here: https://lnkd.in/eDDy4-zR

(Painting by Tibetan artist Choenyi Jampel, who is also absent, not absent)

#Tibet #Nepal #Poetry #Literature #translation#IanBoyden #DalaiLama, @tibetinhistory @voice.of.tibet @tibetradio @sft_international @_ianboyden @tsering_woeser by @dpsnyder_writer

R.I.P. @edicionesera. I mourn this great publisher's passing on my Substack: https://dpsnyder.substack.com/p/the-end-of-era

#Mexico @Publishing #Books by @dpsnyder_writer

Bestia mítica del barrio y su cría.

#nature #naturaleza #suburbio #ciervo
#deer by @dpsnyder_writer