Calling all translators of Southasian languages! Original submissions for Himal Fiction Fest 2026: Southasian Fiction in Translation are now open. Please help us to spread the word to applicants. Deadline: 1 April. #SouthasianFiction #Translation #CallForSubmissions #SouthasianLiterature

'But “Someday at Christmas” ... arrives gently—strings, a winter hush—and then it does something that most Christmas songs refuse to do: it looks directly at the world’s violence and says, without metaphor, that it’s incompatible with the season’s promises.' www.kolumnmagazine.com/2025/12/25/t...

"The Candy Lady was commerce braided into care—mutual aid with a price tag, childcare funded by snacks, block governance conducted in quarters. And like most infrastructure in Black America, she was simultaneously ordinary and heroic." www.kolumnmagazine.com/2025/12/21/t...

Ian Fleming's James Bond spurred numerous imitations, including East Pakistan/Bangladesh's Masud Rana Agent MR-9, still continuing from Dhaka's Sheba publishers. Here Andrew Nette explores the response from the Soviet bloc. Knew nothing of this until this piece.

"If there is a collapse in Western societies, it is not merely a collapse of media or political structures. It is much worse. It may well be a collapse of the human personality."

Very true. I just began to read it and I realized I'll have to read it slower since there's so much here. One thing I want to do in 2016 is read more Nigerian literature.

“Nicaraguan poet and lover of French letters Rubén Darío declared in his autobiography, 'I dreamed of Paris since my birth.'” New at PB: Melanie Shi on the “Paris Latino.”

Somalis are the best. They ain't scared, just clowning on Trump. Read this.

NEWS: The Institute of Museum & Library Services has restored ALL previously canceled federal grants to libraries, following a ruling by a federal judge in Rhode Island last month. This is a massive win for libraries & communities in every state & territory! Learn more: www.ala.org/news/2025/12...

My memoir-essay on growing up with Norman Rockwell Thanksgivings is up in Vogue this morning. Here’s a small extract: www.vogue.com/article/norm...

😔 I loved the songs and the film. Thank you, Jimmy.

More than 20 years ago, after some family deaths, I visited Bangladesh and took a trip to our father's village home. Before we left, I learned something awful in his history as a colonial policeman. The visit gave me the chance to confront his legacy and reflect on what home has come to mean to me.

"There are only so many selfies, photos of my dog, and funny-shaped carpet stains I can share before I come off as a shallow, boring influencer. So, I decided to post an image in my dump of a book a roommate left behind—The Picture of Dorian Gray."

A visit to my father's village in Bangladesh gave me the chance to confront my father's legacy and reflect on what home has come to mean to me. I wrote an essay about this that was just published in the Washington Square Review. www.washingtonsquarereview.com/mahmud-rahman

It's mechanical Turks all the way down

What goes on beneath the shine of AI, an army of raters and super raters working in isolation, without job security, facing the worst ills of the industrial economy: speedup, lack of quality control, and no doubt, in the future, replacement by new AI.

Is the third boom really over? Just as South Asian translations, long underrepresented here, were beginning to show up in a slight uptick? Did we miss the bus? Is the new isolationist U.S. culture in the making responsible for the downturn?

"The more fundamental problem, though, is that both diplomats and development workers refused to engage with South Sudan as it actually existed, rather than the place they wished it to be."

"On the surface, there is the drama and emotion of Leman’s story. Underneath, there is literal subtext concerning philosophy, literature, history and more. It is to Ypi’s credit that none of this is really signposted; the reader is free to dig as deep as they like, or not."

If you're an author and haven't yet signed up for the Anthropic settlement, do yourself a favor (and strike a blow against AI) by checking to see if any of your books were involved. www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

The University of Chicago has been invaded by Daleks! Read all about it 👇

Twenty years ago today, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans. At approximately 5:00 AM, the levees broke, flooding 80% of our city. As a result, an estimated 1400 people lost their lives, and hundreds of thousands lost their homes. Over half of the victims were Black.

An excerpt from my new novel, Alice Sees Ghosts in @scroll.in.web.brid.gy ! scroll.in/article/1085...

Here is an overview of the mentorship genres we have on offer for 2026. For the upcoming year, we will be introducing an exciting new genre, Oral History. Stay tuned for more! 🚨Applications for 2026 open on September 1, 2025 and the deadline is September 30, 2025. Website link in bio. 🔗

Here is a little about our application process, including some key dates. Mark your calendars and polish your applications and writing samples—we're looking forward to hearing from you. 🚨Applications open on September 1, 2025. Website link in bio.🔗 #SouthAsiaSpeaks

"In a tour de force that combines history, memoir, and literary rumination, he explores how Lahore has been made and remade through violence, migration, politics, its diverse communities, and the ebbs and flows of time."

The ambitious Shabdakalpa project, launching in 2028, aims to map the history of every Bengali word in digital form, preserving cultural memory and inspiring future Southasian language initiatives. Ankush Pal writes:

When you tell your grandchildren (or your friends’ grandchildren if you choose not to have a kid) the story of how we overcame this regime, tell them when the fascists came they didn’t come for the guns…they came for the arts.

I am re-reading Gloria Naylor's Mama Day, feeling grateful that she got an NEA Creative Writing fellowship to create this excellent novel. Now comes the news that the agency will no longer support such grants. Our culture is diminished when grants like this end. More $ to go for the iron fist.

"BY BRINGING CENTURIES of writing together in one place, Shabdakalpa will offer unprecedented access to the cultural memory of the Bengali language." www.himalmag.com/culture/shab...

New story translation from Shabnam Nadiya who's impressive in discovering writers from Bangladesh who she wants to translate into English. Check it out, this is a lovely, contemporary story. wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...

Narendra Pachkhédé on C.M. Naim who "refused both the nostalgia of the diaspora and the sentimentality of cultural nationalism. His was a critical love – tender, exacting, and utterly unsentimental."

Trump’s megabill will strip 14 million Americans of access to healthcare care. Here’s why our top story today is something a neo-Nazi sent us about a college application from 15 years ago.

We’re calling for a Florida boycott over the inhumane “Alligator Alcatraz” detention site. Cancel your family vacation and choose a different destination this summer.

Book people: the following small presses have just lost funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Please consider supporting them! A Thread.

The tea estates of South India and Sri Lanka are more than just agricultural or economic sites. They are key historical locations where trade, colonial expansion and labour exploitation converge @avtansa.bsky.social writes

Free virtual translation workshop on July 17 from Transversal, "a grassroots collective of established and aspiring literary translators in Philadelphia." www.bluestoop.org/events/tots-...

"Submitted stories can be about any of the existential threats the Bulletin covers: nuclear weapons, climate change, biological and chemical weapons, artificial intelligence, killer robots, doomsday drone submarines, bioengineered zombies, the gray goo of nanotechnology gone wild, and ...."

আর অবশ্যই — আমাদের প্রিয় সিটি কাউন্সিল সদস্য, জেলা ৩৯-এর শাহানা হানিফ-কে আবারও নির্বাচিত করুন। And of course — re-elect our beloved City Council Member from District 39, Shahana Hanif. চলুন একসাথে ভোট দিই — এক হাসি-খুশি নিউ ইয়র্ক-এর জন্য। Let’s vote together — for a hashi khushi New York. 🇧🇩🗽

Our 2025 shortlist and winner were announced this morning during a joint livestream event with our friends at @himalmag.bsky.social! Our thanks to the folks at Himal and to our five finalists for sharing their work and time with us. Meet the full shortlist here: www.armorysv.com/2025-prize-w...

We are delighted to announce that the winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2025 is Jeffrey Zuckerman's translation of Jellyfish Have No Ears (MacLehose) by Adèle Rosenfeld. Many congratulations to to all the short- and longlisted translators!

Read @amalsingh.bsky.social's short speculative fiction story for Himal Fiction Fest 2025: 🎨 cdd20 / Pixabay

In his Urdu poems, Noon Meem Danish gives voice to dual Pakistani and Black identities, to exile and belonging — blending the pain of dislocation with lyrical force, writes Samee Ahmad for @newlinesmag.bsky.social

‘This was the book the judges really loved, right from our first reading’ We're delighted to announce that the winner of the #InternationalBooker2025 is Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi. Here's everything you need to know about the book: thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-l...

These two beauties are available for pre-order now in the US. The Women’s Courtyard cover is a beautiful painting by renowned Pakistani artist Shahzia Sikander and the Tamas cover is an amazing woodblock print by Indian illustrator Anagh Bannerjee.

"When I set out to write my biography of Oberon, it was not to portray her in blandly heroic terms. I wanted to be honest about the systemic limitations she faced and how she chose to navigate them." www.saada.org/tides/articl...

The film Sinners is a lot of things but most of all I, a lifelong lover of the Blues, loved the film as a tribute to the Blues. The music and dance scenes in the juke joint were marvelous! Miles Caton is awesome. Can't wait for the soundtrack to come. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ntH...