March 27, 2020 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Cynthia Cruz By Cynthia Cruz In our new series of videograms, poets read and discuss the poems getting them through these strange times—broadcasting straight from their couches to yours. These readings bring intimacy into our spaces of isolation, both through the affinity of poetry and through the warmth of being able to speak to each other across the distances. Read More
March 26, 2020 Correspondence Your Tove By Tove Jansson In 1955, after hitting it off at a party in Helsinki, Tove Jansson and the artist Tuulikki Pietilä developed a romance that would last a lifetime. They spent some of the early days of summer 1956 together on the island of Bredskär, where the Jansson family had a summerhouse. The letter below, sent shortly after Pietilä left to teach at an artists’ colony, sees the Moomin creator exploring the dimensions of this new love, recounting the festivities of her uncle Harald’s birthday (“which has traditionally always been a big bash, celebrated at sea”), and drawing “a new little creature that isn’t quite sure if it’s allowed to come in.” Tove Jansson, 1956. Photo: Reino Loppinen. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. 7.10.56 [Bredskär] Beloved, Now my adored relations have finally gone to sleep, strewn about in the most unlikely sleeping places, the chatter has died down, the storm too, and I can talk to you. Thank you for your letter, which felt like a happy hug. Oh yes, my Tuulikki, you have never given me anything but warmth, love, and good cheer. Isn’t it remarkable, and seriously wonderful, that there’s still not a single shadow between us? And you know what, the best thing of all is that I’m not afraid of the shadows. When they come (as I suppose they must, for all those who care for one another), I think we can maneuver our way through them. Read More
March 26, 2020 Poets on Couches Poets on Couches: Mark Wunderlich By Mark Wunderlich In our new series of videograms, poets read and discuss the poems getting them through these strange times—broadcasting straight from their couches to yours. These readings bring intimacy into our spaces of isolation, both through the affinity of poetry and through the warmth of being able to speak to each other across the distances. Read More
March 26, 2020 Arts & Culture Twinning with Eudora Welty By Katy Simpson Smith Young Eudora Welty (courtesy The Eudora Welty Foundation) In The Optimist’s Daughter, Eudora Welty introduces the idea of confluence—of two rivers merging, inexorably, magically, disturbingly. Fate gently takes the reins from Chance. We can rest, we can be held. And the life we thought was singular turns out, reassuringly, to be a strand in a larger pattern. I became a young woman in the house where Welty spent six months as a young woman. We touched the same walls with our same searching fingers. We grew up shopping at the same grocery store—the Jitney 14—where also, I should mention, a thousand other people shopped; there is nothing sacred about a Jitney. We learned gardens from our mothers, who were always more skilled in dirt than we were; we trailed behind them, gathering blooms, starting our own plots of earth. We left home for college at the age of sixteen, we tried on the North for size. It didn’t fit. I imagine she looked back at the South with that same disturbed wonder that I did—missing it, accusing it, forgiving it. We started publishing in our midtwenties, and we began to migrate: around the world, between jobs, across stories. You can want to become someone without fully understanding them. Welty was never my favorite author; she was too roundabout. In high school, I got lost in her sentences. Her Southernness felt too artful. Besides, she was notoriously single, one of the many maiden aunts of literature. She found herself in the tradition of women writers who pursued craft at the expense of family—or whose craft was repellent to suitors—or who believed art meant freedom, and freedom meant solitude. To a young girl who still believed in a soulmate-based romanticism, Welty’s aloneness felt damning. Read More
March 25, 2020 Whiting Awards 2020 Introducing the Winners of the 2020 Whiting Awards By The Paris Review For the sixth consecutive year, in 2020 The Paris Review Daily is pleased to announce the winners of the Whiting Awards. As in previous years, we’re also delighted to share excerpts of work by each of the winners. Here’s the list of the 2020 honorees: Aria Aber, poetry Diannely Antigua, poetry Will Arbery, drama Jaquira Díaz, nonfiction Andrea Lawlor, fiction Ling Ma, fiction Jake Skeets, poetry Genevieve Sly Crane, fiction Jia Tolentino, nonfiction Genya Turovskaya, poetry Since 1985, the Whiting Foundation has supported creative writing through the Whiting Awards, which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. The awards, of $50,000 each, are based on early accomplishment and the promise of great work to come. Previous recipients include Lydia Davis, Deborah Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eugenides, Tony Kushner, Sigrid Nunez, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Mona Simpson, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Colson Whitehead. Explore all the winners here. Congratulations to this year’s honorees. And for more great writing from Whiting Award recipients, check out our collections of work from the 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 winners.
March 25, 2020 Whiting Awards 2020 Genya Turovskaya, Poetry By Genya Turovskaya Genya Turovskaya. Photo: Willis Sparks. Genya Turovskaya was born in Kiev, Ukraine, and grew up in New York City. She is the author of The Breathing Body of This Thought (Black Square, 2019) and the chapbooks Calendar (Ugly Duckling, 2002), The Tides (Octopus, 2007), New Year’s Day (Octopus, 2011), and Dear Jenny (Supermachine, 2011). Her poetry and translations of contemporary Russian poets have appeared in Chicago Review, Conjunctions, A Public Space, and other publications. Her translation of Aleksandr Skidan’s Red Shifting was published by Ugly Duckling in 2008. She is a cotranslator of Elena Fanailova’s Russian Version (UDP, 2009, 2019), which won the University of Rochester’s Three Percent Award for Best Translated Book of Poetry in 2010. She is also a cotranslator of Endarkenment, The Selected Poems of Arkadii Dragomoshchenko (Wesleyan, 2014). She lives in Brooklyn. * “Failure to Declare” I am beside myself I have no beast in this ring, no horse in this race Nobody always waves goodbye The stars are different here The wind is gusting in reverse Read More