Laertes, a Press for Literary Translation

11/14/2024

News just stumbled upon (John Freedman and John Farndon) : A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War: 20 Short Works by Ukrainian Playwrights, was included on The Telegraph's list of the Best Books on Ukraine published in 2023:

Ukraine 22 (Penguin, £12.99) and A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War (Egret, £24.99), edited by Mark Andryczyk and John Freedman respectively, are anthologies of responses to the war by Ukraine’s best-known writers. Angry, defiant and often heart-wrenching, the authors included in the collections invite you to share in their attempts to comprehend what befell them in the six months following February 24 2022.

The article links to this, the first edition page:

Laertes is an independent press committed to literary translation — to the furthering of that particular art. Our aim is also to relay works from far and wide, in any genre, that render the full human weight.

11/04/2024

Θανάσης Βαλτινός l Thanassis Valtinos passed away on the 31st of October. I first read his "The Descent of the Nine" in my weak, pitiful French, but when Kapetan Nikítas was struck down, the full human weight of a death in war struck me. The work of Valtinos was the inspiration for this press (that and Martin McKinsey's wondrous translations of Modern Greek, which made me see literary translation as an art in its own right, as Marty's art form). Here is a photograph from 2022.

10/29/2024

Advance publicity for the reading of Ghost Land in Tokyo, as part of the annual "Theatre Born in Conflict Zones" festival. Congratulations to Andrii Bondarenko, John Freedman, whose translation was the basis for the Japanese version, and to City Garage Theatre, who commissioned the work itself.

10/27/2024

A wonderful article in the Guardian about the monumental weight of Ukrainian art in this time of war for years and for ages to come. Maksym Kurochkin is cited . . . with John Freedman and John Farndon.

Poets, artists, playwrights and musicians are fighting and dying in Ukraine, and their work is capturing the horror and emotion of the conflict

10/04/2024

Footsteps from Duke University, our two new titles in the hands of Wander Lorentz De Haas of The Regulator Bookshop, our truest, most comprehending supporter. In every sense they are in great good company.

09/22/2024

The work of two of our playwrights from Ukraine, Kateryna Penkova and Vitaliy Chenskiy, to be performed in Sydney, Australia in an event which brings together playwrights from all over the world (Ukraine, Singapore, Japan, PNG, Indonesia, Iraq, South Africa, India, Indonesia and Jamaica’s first Rastafarian play) With John Freedman and John Farndon

WORLDS  ALIVE !  2025 Dramatic reading of plays from around the world The world is a communion of different voices full of nuance, fun and enduring optimism. In this spirit we present new voices from 10 countries, with plays never seen before  in Australia. We are presenting them for you, for t...

09/12/2024

A Kirkus Review for Wrongland:
The death of his father brings an expat back to his fraught hometown in Kapllani’s novel . . . Karl’s trip home reopens memories stretching back to his mother’s mysterious su***de decades before . . . a portrait emerges not only of a fractured family, but also of a fractured city and of an exile who has lived most of his life (in the words of his father) “speaking other people’s languages.” . . . Through Karl’s experiences, Kapllani excavates the complex and often paradoxical relationship a person has with the homeland from which they have been separated, whether through immigration, war, regime change, or the simple passage of time. A thoughtful and surprising novel about Albania and exile. —Kirkus Reviews

The death of his father brings an expat back to his fraught hometown in Kapllani’s novel.

09/03/2024

Our two new volumes on the list for National Translation Month (scroll down to fiction).
https://www.clmp.org/news/a-reading-list-for-national-translation-month-2024/

08/15/2024

A profound, incisive, illuminated collection by Andrei Kureichik, marvelously brought to life in translation by John Freedman, wondrously designed by Maxine Mills, beginning its journey to birth . . .

07/06/2024

Philip Arnoult passed away on the 30th of June 2024. We owe him a debt of gratitude for his sustaining role in our Ukrainian anthology: A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War: 20 Short Works by Ukrainian Playwrights. He was in himself like a kind of living stage for all that is noble and heartful, just and true, impassioned — for the life of the spirit itself. He was, as a person, a being of such light — fully illumined. With John Freedman and Center for International Theatre Development (CITD).

07/02/2024

At last, the award page is up . . . the bronze IPPY for A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War: 20 Short Works by Ukrainian Playwrights, in the category of Current Events: Social Issues, Humanitarian. With John Freedman, John Farndon.

Building Social Relationships 3: A Systematic Approach to Teaching Social Skills to Children with Autism and other Social Challenges

06/27/2024

The premiere edition of the egret fiction imprint on its way to press: Wrongland, by Gazmend Kapllani, translated by Peter Bien (who brought Kazantzakis to the English-speaking world), an essential work on migration and homecoming and a piercing recollection of Albania under Hoxha.

Wrongland balances on an edge of migration and return. It crosses from an Albania recently rid of Hoxha to a Greece riven by tensions that ultimately drive the protagonist on to America. But homecoming is the pivot — one stuck in an unavoidable vying between alternate worlds.
The reader, a simple stranger, is introduced to Ters, a city configured by remnants from the past, a locale scored by evil — at times, gripped by good.

With thanks from the bottom of my heart to our brilliant designers, Maxine Mills, and Biba Kayewich Art. And to Ryan Dann, our website maestro/designer.

Laertes is an independent press committed to literary translation — to the furthering of that particular art. Our aim is also to relay works from far and wide, in any genre, that render the full human weight.

04/22/2024

An illuminating, beautifully wrought review in Asymptote: https://www.asymptotejournal.com/criticism/ukrainian-playwrights-a-dictionary-of-emotions-in-a-time-of-war-20-short-works-by-ukrainian-playwrights/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2PwUDyyItNatWx30cWqqUrl8kwpccqnx-8oyYrJIM9b-FCS3vxzizBvi4_aem_AWX6Ssxg1jznksvFUqvoarleanobfxvT6YLkt-NQXoYX_knca6JVB3PhPtJTnUvh4Kg5EWa7aStuAYYXXzaIC45_ by Michelle Chan Schmidt of A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War; John Freedman's brainchild; with the work of brilliant playwrights: Maksym Kurochkin and The Theater of Playwrights, et ales; with wonderful translations: John Freedman, John Farndon, Natalia Bratus, and Evgenia Kovryga; a privilege to be a part of . . .

New dictionaries emerge from Ukraine: not dictionaries of translation, though they often engage with bilingualism. Not thesauri: they don’t provide synonyms. They are not dictionaries of new lexicons, but treasuries of new meaning, mapped onto the words of pre-war times.There is, f

04/03/2024

Forthcoming from Egret chapbooks, a brilliant, affecting cycle of poems by the celebrated Roma poet, Emil-Iulian Sude, translated from the Romanian by Diana Manole: The Security Guard at Night.
https://www.laertesbooks.org/egret-chapbooks

03/22/2024

At the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with greatest thanks to Adi Džumhur.
Jeton Neziraj, John Freedman, Maksym Kurochkin (et al), John Farndon, Andrei Kureichik Andrii Bondarenko, Xhevdet Bajraj, Vjollca Bajraj, Ani Gjika, Dori Basha, Ilir Gjocaj, Visar Krusa.

03/10/2024

In honor of Xhevdet Bajraj's birth, a forthcoming announcement, with Vjollca Bajraj, Ani Gjika, and Fadil Bajraj. Special thanks for the image to Will Hewett (Alice Rose Whitmore), Biba Kayewich, and to Maxine Mills, of course, as always, for the cover!

COFFIN
When I die
I hope they will look
for the black box of my life
among my poems
(Translated from the Spanish by Alice Whitmore)

03/06/2024

In the Global Browsing Collection at the University of North Carolina . . . with John Freedman, John Farndon, and Maksym Kurochkin . . .

02/28/2024

Something wonderful in the works, long in the making, but ever-relevant — an essential, many-sided human narrative. With Jeton Neziraj, co-creator. Great thanks for spectacular images by Biba Kayewich Art and marvelous design by Maxine Mills. Special help from Almir Imsirevic and Ellen Elias-Bursac made this possible. The full roster of playwrights and translators to come.