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Articles by Daniel Simon
Editor’s Note, November 2026
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to signin or get access. To edit creativity, or creatively, I consider it my job to push to redefine our professional interest . . . to include the attention we pay to our students. —Hilda Raz, “Editing Creativity” (2009) Since 1927, World Literature Today has been connected—sometimes loosely, often directly—to the University of Oklahoma’s teaching mission.
Editor’s Note, September 2026
The foundations of a later America were laid in vigorous polemics, and the rough stone was plentifully mortared with idealism. —Vernon Louis Parrington If Oklahoma is the “most American” state, I’d contend that World Literature Today is the “most American” of the United States’ internationally minded lit mags. I borrow the phrase from my colleague Rilla Askew, who writes about the state as a microcosm of the US in one of the best essays ever written about Oklahoma (“Most American,” Nimrod, 2006).
Amphibious Living: January O’Neil interviews Joseph O. Legaspi
January O’Neil (left) and Joseph O. Legaspi (right) In the mid-90s, JOSEPH O. LEGASPI and JANUARY O’NEIL met hovering over a cheese plate at the graduate school orientation of NYU’s creative writing program. They have been friends and champions for each other ever since. On the recent release of Joseph’s third full-length collection, Amphibian, the two formally met on Zoom to discuss the book, persistence, survival, legacy, and the long arc of their friendship.
Auntie Instructions for the Future: Kinship, Care, and Cherie Dimaline, by Laura Harjo
The Native American Studies Department at OU welcomed Cherie Dimaline with a Round Dance / October 20, 2025 In addition to chairing the Native American Studies Department at OU and teaching the fall 2025 Neustadt seminar, Laura Harjo took part in a roundtable conversation that discussed Indigenous contexts for understanding Dimaline’s work during the Neustadt Lit Fest. “You have to stand for your words,” she would tell me.
Recapping the 2025 Neustadt Lit Fest, by Daniel Simon
To view the photo captions, toggle the circled “i” in the upper lefthand corner of the image frame. The 2025 Neustadt Lit Fest, hostedby World Literature Today, took place on the University of Oklahoma (OU) campus October 20–22. Eight public events—featuring more than two dozen writers, dancers, musicians, and scholars—attracted more than a thousand attendees, including several hundred students from OU, the Norman Public Schools, and Colorado Academy.
17 Literary Romance Recommendations: Books about Love, Life, and Time, by Emiley White
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. For those wishing to explore the human heart and mind, for those that love to read about love, for the “hopefully” romantics: here are some throwbacks, classics, and recent releases from all around the world. Regency Lovers Jo Baker Longbourn Vintage, 2014 Food, Family, and a Spoonful of Romance Laura Esquivel Like Water for Chocolate Trans.
Cherie Dimaline Wins NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature
World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, announced late Tuesday that Cherie Dimaline will be the next winner of the renowned NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Awarded in alternating years with the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the NSK Prize recognizes outstanding literary merit in literature worldwide.
Ananda Devi to Headline 2024 Neustadt Lit Fest at OU, by The Editors of WLT
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, will confer the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature on the Mauritian writer Ananda Devi during the Neustadt Lit Fest, scheduled Oct. 21–23.
Perspectives on Walking: A Lit List, by James Fawcett & Madeline Myers
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. In the summer of 2022 I (James Fawcett) walked from Denver to Durango on the Colorado Trail. I started the walk alone and eighteen years old, having just finished my freshman year of college.
Jury Announced for the 2025 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, has announced the names of the jury members who will select the finalists for the renowned NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature.
World Literature Today Announces 2024 Student Translation Prize Winners, by the Editors of WLT
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, has announced the winners of its annual Student Translation Prize. Lucy Coleman and Madeline Jones were recently named the recipients of the seventh annual translation prize for students sponsored by World Literature Today.
A Booklist for Mother’s Day, by Daria Shchukina
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. As Mother’s Day in the US approaches, we celebrate our mothers, the most incredible and important people, who have given us all tenderness and warmth since our first breath. On this special day, we can once again express gratitude for the unconditional love, selflessness, and self-sacrifice they shower upon us.
First US Anthology Celebrates Literary Translators’ Work from Nineteen Languages, by The Editors of WLT
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. The first US anthology celebrating the breadth of literary translators’ work debuts today (April 9, 2024). Best Literary Translations is a new annual featuring the year’s best poetry, short fiction, and essays, drawn from US-affiliated literary journals and magazines.
Editor’s Choice: Audio Poetry for National Poetry Month, by Daniel Simon
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. Since 2011, WLT has built up a Soundcloud archive of more than two hundred recordings consisting mostly of audio poetry. The poems are often in bilingual or trilingual versions read by the authors themselves, accompanied by many brilliant English-language renditions by the translators who serve as cultural ferriers between the farther shores of literature.
Editor’s Note, March 2024
The volcano is perhaps no longer just the symbol of social or warlike violence but the metaphor of a real ecological time bomb to come. —Charif Majdalani, “Dancing at the Foot of a Volcano” For more than a decade and a half, World Literature Today has been taking the pulse, so to speak, of writers’ responses to the planetary climate crisis.
75 Notable Translations 2023, by Michelle Johnson
In an interview up at the Booker Prizes, 2023 International Booker Prize–winning translator Angela Rodel describes the work of author and translator as a “duet.” Here we offer seventy-five duets in another year with many more to celebrate. We hope you’ll add those we’ve missed on our social media channels using the hashtag #2023InTranslation.
The Best Literary Translations 2025 Anthology: Call for Submissions from Deep Vellum
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. Submissions open: November 15, 2023, to January 5, 2024 ~ for translations published during 2023 ~ early submissions encouraged At midnight on November 15, Deep Vellum began accepting nominations for the next edition of their exciting new anthology initiative: The Best Literary Translations 2025.
Editor’s Note, November 2023
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to signin or get access. A [literary] journal is the most elegant way to conspire. —J. G.
A Quiet Author’s Written Rebellion: An Interview with Ananda Devi, by Dinah Assouline Stillman
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. Ananda Devi is a noted francophone poet, writer, ethnologist, translator, and occasional scriptwriter for the movie adaptations to her short stories and novels. Born in Mauritius, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean and the setting for most of her works, she is considered one of the country’s major writers, although she writes in French and has been living in France for more than twenty years.
5 Questions for Juhani Karila, by Michelle Johnson
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. A deadly curse, mythical creatures, and a murder investigation: in Juhani Karila’s English-language debut, Fishing for the Little Pike, a young woman has much to contend with on her annual pilgrimage to catch a pike in Lapland, Finland. Lola Rogers translated this wildly imaginative novel published by Restless Books in September 2023. Michelle Johnson: Fishing for the Little Pike unfolds in Lapland, in northern Finland.
Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Publication of "Parable of the Sower"
Join us for a virtual celebration of the 30th anniversary of the publication of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Hosted by Isis Asare, the founder of Sistah Scifi – the first Black owned bookstore focused on science fiction and fantasy in the United States. Panelists include adrienne maree brown, Ayana Jamieson, and Dan Simon. This program is online only and free to attend. In October 1993, Four Walls Eight Windows published the first edition of Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.
Finding Hope in Language Revitalization: A Conversation with The Language Conservancy’s Wilhelm Meya, by Daniel Simon
On August 9, 2023, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, WLT editor in chief Daniel Simon spoke with Wilhelm K. Meya, chairman and CEO of The Language Conservancy (TLC) about the nonprofit’s remarkable work of helping to revitalize Indigenous languages. Their conversation, which took place over Zoom, has been edited for clarity and length.
Gene Luen Yang to Headline 2023 Neustadt Lit Fest at OU
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, will award the 2023 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature to Gene Luen Yang, the legendary graphic novelist. On Wednesday, Oct. 25, Yang will receive the $35,000 prize, a silver medallion and a certificate at a ceremony at OU.
World Literature Today Announces Finalists for 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, has announced finalists for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. This prestigious award recognizes significant contributions to world literature and has a history as a lead-up to the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Share the Joy of Giving—and Receiving—Books as Gifts, by The Editors of WLT
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. What’s the best book gift you’ve ever received? To help launch “The Future of the Book” issue of WLT, tweet us using the hashtag #BestGiftBookWLT. You can also enter your nomination here, and, in a few sentences, tell us about who gave you the book, the occasion for the gift, and/or what you liked best about it.
A Republic of the Imagination: In Conversation with Azar Nafisi, by Daniel Simon
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Jury Announced for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, by WLT
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, has announced the names of the jury members who will select the finalists for the next Neustadt International Prize for Literature. The jury for the 2024 Neustadt Prize is composed of the following nine members: The jurors’ bios can be found on the Neustadt Prize website.
Lockdown in Literature, by The Editors of WLT
There has been plenty of handwringing among some over whether it’s too soon to write pandemic literature, but these five books answer that question with a firm no. Each is set in the lockdown days while being about so much more than the pandemic. Louise Erdrich The Sentence Harper, 2021 Louise Erdrich’s most recent novel begins on All Souls’ Day 2019 and ends on All Souls’ Day 2020.
Alice-Catherine Carls to Deliver “Translation as a Laboratory for Life” Lecture, by The Editors of WLT
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. On Thursday, March 23, 2023, noted French American scholar and translator Alice-Catherine Carls will deliver a public talk called “Translation as a Laboratory for Life” on the University of Oklahoma (OU) Norman campus.
World Literature Today Seeks Votes in ASME Best Cover Contest, by The Editors of WLT
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. The editors of World Literature Today are nominating the May/June 2022 “Muses” issue for the annual Best Cover Contest sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors, the principal organization for the editorial leaders of magazines and websites published in the United States.
The Love Month: Odes to Romance and Friendship, by Peyton Winter
February can be daunting for those unable to escape the lovestruck couples surrounding them, while others look forward to the feeling of being swept off their feet in the so-called love month. No matter where you fall on the relationship spectrum, you’ll enjoy this collection of international stories displaying romantic relationships, friendship, brotherhood and sisterhood, and, most importantly, love.
WLT to Launch “The Russophone Literature of Resistance” Issue on March 1
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RC Davis-Undiano Play Opens Feb. 10
A play written by World Literature Today Executive Director RC Davis-Undiano will open at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10, at Yellow Dog Coffee Company in Norman. Free and open to the public, the play is scheduled to run Feb. 10, 11, 17 and 18. Yellow Dog Coffee Company is located at 222 S. Porter Ave. in Norman.
WLT Seeks Graphic Designer
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. World Literature Today is seeking applicants for consideration to join the magazine as its principal designer. The official university listing for the job can be found here. WLT’s graphic designer is responsible for supporting and coordinating assigned print and web projects including researching, planning, implementing, and maintaining all print and web design activities and coordinating with appropriate managers.
Announcing WLT’s 2022 Pushcart Prize Nominees, by Daniel Simon
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. Fresh off our delight in seeing Kamilah Aisha Moon’s poem “Fireflies” in the Pushcart Prize XLVII anthology, the editors of World Literature Today are delighted to announce our new shortlist of Pushcart nominations for 2022. Pushcart Prize XLVIII will honor the best poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, and essays published by small-press magazines and book publishers.
Editor’s Note, January 2023
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. IN HIS SPEECH accepting the 2022 Neustadt Prize, Boubacar Boris Diop listed several of his intellectual and literary mentors: Aimé Césaire, Cheikh Anta Diop, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Cheik Aliou Ndao, Ayi Kwei Armah, and Mongo Beti.
World Literature Today’s 75 Notable Translations of 2022, by Michelle Johnson
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. It’s time to celebrate another year of translations, and there’s plenty to celebrate. Literature from underrepresented languages moved to center stage. Tomb of Sand, written by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell, became the first book originally written in an Indian language to win the International Booker Prize for Translated Fiction.
5 New Books for Latinx/Hispanic Heritage Month, by Stevi Smith
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. In celebration of Latinx/Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15–October 15), I present to you four recent books (and one to look out for) from 2022. Each of these books is written by either a Latinx or Hispanic author and draws from their cultural experiences. Included are fictional stories, memoirs, and poetry, each focusing on aspects of life unique to the Latinx/Hispanic experience.
100 Issues in 20 Years: A Top 10 List (2002–2022), by Daniel Simon
In his poem called “The Man on the Dump” (1938), Wallace Stevens writes: “Days pass like papers from a press.” Stevens, who was in his late fifties when he wrote the poem on the eve of World War II, turns it into a surprisingly philosophical meditation, given the subject matter: one of the poem’s supreme ironies is that much of the text’s surface catalogs the detritus the author might have found strewn about the local landfill in Hartford, Connecticut.
In Memoriam Robert Bly (1926–2021), by The Editors of WLT
Photo by Ann Arbor When we heard the news of Robert Bly’s passing yesterday, our thoughts turned not only to his poetry but to his prolific career as a translator. In these pages alone, reviews of Bly’s translations or co-translations of poetry by César Vallejo, Harry Martinson, Gunnar Ekelöf, Tomas Tranströmer, Kabir Das, Vicente Aleixandre, Rolf Jacobsen, and Rainer Maria Rilke appeared between 1964 and 1981.
Editor’s Note, Summer 2021
You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once—there has to be a limit. – Edward W. Said, “The Myth of ‘The Clash of Civilizations’” IN ITS LAUDED ninety-five-year publishing history, World Literature Today has never devoted a cover feature, let alone a dossier, exclusively to the literature, art, and culture of Palestine.
A Farewell to Adam Zagajewski, by Marek Makowski
Photo by Jerry Bauer I was waiting for a tennis court on the lakeshore in Chicago when I read that Adam Zagajewski died. I have always considered tennis like writing: you practice to get into a rhythm, you wait for moments of inspiration, and sometimes you play out your imagination without feeling yourself thinking or moving at all.
Remembering Nawal El Saadawi, by Adele Newson-Horst
Nawal in Stockholm / Courtesy of the author It is a herculean task to attempt to capture essence of the writer, physician, and global activist Nawal El Saadawi. There is so much to say, the little things and the bigger things, and in tandem they still don’t equal Nawal. The author of more than fifty books died at the age of eighty-nine on March 21, 2021. My first direct contact with Nawal El Saadawi occurred on March 14, 2007, and I have retained the first email she sent to me.
Remembering Neustadt Laureate Adam Zagajewski (1945–2021), by The Editors of WLT
When we heard the news yesterday that Adam Zagajewski had passed away at the age of seventy-five in Kraków, Poland, we immediately thought not only of his exceptional poetry and essays but also of his exceedingly warm congeniality. Zagajewski and his wife, Maya, graced us with their presence at the University of Oklahoma in October 2004, on the occasion of his receiving that year’s Neustadt International Prize for Literature, a year that also saw Chinua Achebe, J. M.
Photographing the Tulsa Massacre: A Conversation with Karlos K. Hill, by Daniel Simon
Spectators heading toward Greenwood on June 1, 1921 / Courtesy of the University of Tulsa, McFarlin Library Just published by the University of Oklahoma Press, The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History represents a landmark work of historical scholarship. Historian Karlos K. Hill spent three intensive years researching and writing the book. I had the privilege of reading an advance copy and reached out to Dr. Hill to initiate a dialogue about his work on the project.
The Conscience and Craft of Theodore J. Ziolkowski (1932–2020), by Daniel Simon
Our strolls through the cemeteries of Berlin, then, are no more funereal and depressing than, say, the performance of Dvořák’s majestic Requiem, which we attended on a Saturday evening in the Berliner Dom (as one in the series of requiems performed annually around Totensonntag.)—Theodore Ziolkowski, “Time Interred: Walks through Berlin’s Cemeteries,” World Literature Today 79, no.
Festival Five with NSK Juror Adib Khorram, by The Editors of WLT
Adib Khorram is an author, graphic designer, and tea enthusiast. Iranian American, he was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. A theater kid in high school, he went on to study design and technical theater at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, with an emphasis in lighting design. He later attended one year of film school in Vancouver. He returned to Kansas City after school and has worked in the event production industry ever since.
Festival Five with NSK Juror Cynthia Weill, by The Editors of WLT
Cynthia Weill is director of the Center for Children’s Literature at the Bank Street College of Education. She is trained as an art historian and has worked as an educator and in humanitarian assistance. She holds a doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University. She completed her dissertation work in Oaxaca, Mexico, where she worked closely with artisans to collaboratively develop a series of bilingual children’s books.
“Two Beings Entwined”: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of Conflict and Healing, by Renee H. Shea
Harlan Margaret Van Cao and Lan Cao / Courtesy of Penguin Random House Family in Six Tones: A Refugee Mother, an American Daughter (Viking, 2020) is a memoir written in alternating narrative chapters between Lan Cao and Harlan Margaret Van Cao. Coming to the United States from Vietnam in 1975 as a thirteen-year-old refugee, Lan Cao forged her identity through education and academic achievement.
The Festival Five with NSK Juror Sonia Patel, by The Editors of WLT
Sonia Patel writes out of her experience as a first-generation Indian-American born in New York and raised in Hawaii, an experience lushly and brilliantly explored in her debut novel, Rani Patel in Full Effect. Rani was a finalist for the Morris Award, received four-starred reviews from trade magazines, and was listed on YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults and Kirkus Reviews’ Best Teen Books of 2016.
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