For Shakespeare Fans, Two Sequels by David Henry Wilson

On the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s departure (exit stage left), a treat for all you Shakespeare fans. Playwright David Henry Wilson had the temerity to write sequels to The Merchant of Venice and Othello. What’s more, he pulled it off. How? How could any contemporary writer inhabit Shakespeare’s world and language? Wilson himself asks…

Review of “Damnificados” in World Literature Today

I’m thrilled that Damnificados has just been reviewed in World Literature Today, one of the world’s most venerable literary journals. WLT was founded in 1927, and was originally called Books Abroad. The founder, Dr. Roy Temple House, was Chair of Modern Languages at the University of Oklahoma. House believed that the United States was becoming…

The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail – by Oscar Martinez

If you want to know what hell feels like, try holding onto the outside of a train moving at thirty miles per hour in icy weather for eight hours, knowing that if you fall you’ll be sucked under the train and you’ll lose either your legs or your head. Even if you make it, chances…

[Settled Wanderers] The Poetry of Western Sahara – by Sam Berkson and Mohamed Sulaiman

In Macedonia they sing of Alexander the Great. The Yoruba of Nigeria sing of the warrior king Onikoyi. In Western Sahara they sing of the folk heroes who have struggled and are struggling now for statehood while the world ignores them. In 1975 Morocco invaded Western Sahara. Since then, half of the population have been…

RIP Elie Wiesel 1928-2016

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” (Night) According to the Nobel Prize committee, who awarded him the Peace Prize in 1986, Elie Wiesel was “The Messenger to Mankind.” His experiences as a Holocaust survivor meant he had the worst messages imaginable about…