#bosnian croatian serbian literature

[saintsaensreads]

The growing TBR Pile : 2024 edition

I'm not a fast reader. Case in point : Storygraph has me pinned as someone reading a book in... 2 months. I say this is slander. I think. I'm not sure. There might be some truth somewhere. But I consume a lot of content either via YouTube or Tumblr about books.

The consequences are dire : my TBR pile grows and grows! So here are some of my 2024 discoveries that I want to read (at some point, I don't know when exactly, it's difficult to say - but it will happen?).

First stop : Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian literature.

At the beginning of the year, I happened on a very short article (in an otherwise very dense newspaper) listing some of the latest translations by a single translator of BCS language. She mentioned the similarities and differences between all those languages, leading me to read more and more about her work and those languages. It made me quite curious about translated literature from that region and ended up compiling a few of them.

Source : interview in French of Chloe Billon, the translator in question, in Pages Sauvages.

Na Drini ćuprija - The Bridge over the Drina -, Ivo Andrić (1945)

The town of Visegrad was long caught between the warring Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, but its sixteenth-century bridge survived unscathed--until 1914 when tensions in the Balkans triggered the first World War. Spanning generations, nationalities, and creeds, The Bridge on the Drina brilliantly illuminates a succession of lives that swirl around the majestic stone arches. Among them is that of the bridge's builder, a Serb kidnapped as a boy by the Ottomans; years later, as the empire's Grand Vezir, he decides to construct a bridge at the spot where he was parted from his mother. A workman named Radisav tries to hinder the construction, with horrific consequences. Later, the beautiful young Fata climbs the bridge's parapet to escape an arranged marriage, and, later still, an inveterate gambler named Milan risks everything on it in one final game with the devil.

Adios, Comboy, Olja Savičević Ivančević (2011)

Dada’s life is at a standstill in Zagreb—she’s sleeping with a married man, working a dead-end job, and even the parties have started to feel exhausting. So when her sister calls her back home to help with their aging mother, she doesn’t hesitate to leave the city behind. But she arrives to find her mother hoarding pills, her sister chain-smoking, her long-dead father’s shoes still lined up on the steps, and the cowboy posters of her younger brother Daniel (who threw himself under a train four years ago) still on the walls.Hoping to free her family from the grip of the past, Dada vows to unravel the mystery of Daniel’s final days.

Second Stop : Polish literature

I learned a lot this past year about Poland (for personal reasons). I started reading about the history of the country, the language, its culture etc. I was at first quite ashamed to be so oblivious to another country from which quite a few of my friends's family come from, and with which French history is so closely linked. Obviously, I started piling up some polish writers in my TBR as a result.

Bezrobotny Lucyfer - Lucifer Unemployed -, Aleksander Wat (1927)

In these nine stories the Polish writer Aleksander Wat consistently turns history on its ear in comic reversals reverberating with futurist rhythms and the gently mocking humor of despair. Wat inverts the conventions of religion, politics, and culture to fantastic effect, illuminating the anarchic conditions of existence in interwar Europe. The title story finds a superbly ironic Lucifer wandering the Europe of the late 1920s in search of a mission: what impact can a devil have in a godless time? What is his sorcery in a society far more diablical than the devil himself? Too idealistic for a world full of modern cruelties, the unemployable Lucifer finally finds the only means of guaranteed immortality. In "The Eternally Wandering Jew," steady Jewish conversion to Christianity results in Nathan the Talmudist reigning as Pope Urban IX. The hilarious satire on power, "Kings in Exile," unfolds with the dethroned monarchs of Europe meeting to found their own republic in an uninhabited island in the Indian Ocean.

Third and Final Stop : under the Influence

I used to watch TikTok at some point, and most of the content left me frustrated, with a hint of dissatisfaction. But sometimes, sometimes, I happened on a great content creator, full of enthusiasm, or a very very avid reader sharing their love for one book. This, unfortunately, doesn't leave me unbothered. And I do admit, witnessing the passion of someone else about a book, made me want to dive into the novels myself !

Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas - The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas -, Machado de Assis (1881)

Machado de Assis is not only Brazil's most celebrated writer but also a writer of world stature. In his masterpiece, the 1881 novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (also translated as Epitaph of a Small Winner), the ghost of a decadent and disagreeable aristocrat decides to write his memoir. He dedicates it to the worms gnawing at his corpse and tells of his failed romances and half-hearted political ambitions, serves up hare-brained philosophies and complains with gusto from the depths of his grave. Wildly imaginative, wickedly witty and ahead of its time, the novel has been compared to works by Cervantes, Sterne, Joyce, Nabokov, Borges and Calvino, and has influenced generations of writers around the world.

The Safekeep, Yael van der Wouden (2024)

It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season. Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem.

[theforeverlearner]

Thursday, September 19

I started my bachelor's degree in Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrian/Serbian (BCMS) this week.

To be exact, it's called in French a Licence LLCER (Langues, Littératures et Civilisations Étrangères et Régionales) BCMS (Bosniaque Croate Monténégrin Serbe).

This program is taking place online which is a great for people working full-time like me.

I browsed the different courses that I'll be taking this semester: linguistics and grammar, grammatical exercises, translation, written and oral expression, literature, history...

Today, I mostly worked on reviewing A2 vocabulary/grammar. I am joining the B1 level but first I want to make sure that I am starting with a solid (grammatical) foundation.

[queer-geordie-dyke]

“In 1941, after a dramatic turn of events, both outside and inside the country, Croatia proclaimed independence, becoming a puppet state of the German Third Reich. The Independent State of Croatia (NDH – Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska) was born. Almost immediately, racial laws were introduced. Fritz (my grandfather) had just come back from his travels abroad when the new law forced him to return to the town of his birth in order to register as a Jew and get a yellow star on his sleeve. His sisters who stayed in Bosnia were in hiding. Both of them had married Serbs because, even with Serbs being hated and persecuted, it was still better to be a Serb than a Jew.

“It’s still better to be a Serb than a Jew” – I would hear that same exact sentence from a Hungarian consul in London in 1993, while we were applying for a visa. The consul meant it as a joke. But my husband and I, people with no country or passport at the time, did not laugh. We could not understand how this man had managed to identify us as a Serb and a Jew respectively, although we ourselves had never mentioned those facts and our travel documents did not hold that information. Are all racists of this world connected in some unknown, mysterious way? Do they know facts about us that even we don’t know?

Fritz was torn. He had an invitation to emigrate to Israel. My mother would mourn his refusal to take that offer throughout her whole life. Why didn’t he leave? He was a fairly well-known figure in Zagreb. One of his best friends was Bozidar Adzija, a respected leftist writer and politician. A street in Zagreb bore his name until the right wing Tudjman government changed it in the nineties.

This group of young people was infected by progressive ideas about a world without nationalism and religious sectarianism. Fleeing to Israel must have seemed like giving up on those ideas. It meant seeking refuge with your own tribe and thus denouncing the idea of being a citizen of the world. At least I presume that was one of the reasons to stay. There was also the well known human habit of refusing to believe the worst could ever happen. Also, finding solace in the word of the law, even if that law seems wrong (If I obey the law, they would not hurt me, would they? The answer is: yes, they would.)

Fritz obediently returned to his town of Bijeljina and registered as a Jew. He went searching for his sisters who chased him away: he was a danger to them. They were hiding in a Serbian Orthodox church where the authorities didn’t dare to touch them. They both took their husbands’ Serbian names. They didn’t want to risk capture because of their brother. Later on, in discussions with my Jewish family in Belgrade, I would always detect an animosity towards Fritz: how dared he endanger the family? Fritz was on his own, without protection from anyone. He was immediately captured by the Bosnian pro-Nazi Muslim police and transferred to the Croatian Ustashas. And that’s how he found himself in Jasenovac concentration camp.

That beautiful, soft, elegant, educated man was now digging mud from the smelly ditch surrounding the camp, at the mercy of enthusiastic killers. It wouldn’t last long. How old was he when he died? I could never find out. He had disappeared without a trace. Branka spent the war in Zagreb, under the strict antisemitic laws, studying French and Yugoslav literature at the university. She would hide from all the horror behind books. They were saving her life. On the practical front, she started using her biological mother’s name, Savić, because – as I said before – in that time and that place it was still better to be a Serb than a Jew. But what really protected her during the Nazi years in Croatia was her adoptive mother, Ljuba.”

- Mira Furlan, Love Me More Than Anything In the World

[certainwoman]

Absolutely sick how your own country successfully committed ethnic cleansing in your own living memory and you have nothing to say about it. The primary reason you care about I/P is it allows you to hate Jews openly, on the world scale it's actually a very minor conflict.

Jfc i do care about the first part and i talk about it and i talked about it. If you mean bosnia and in the latter part of the war ethnic cleansing of serbian people. I am croatian and was a baby when this happened, just to clarify it. And my own ethnic background is complex. Grandmother from my bio father’s side was bosnian muslim, my grandfather from my mother’s side was muslim montenegrin. i did talk about in the past. About the war and my own family past. I am upset at these accusations and I am trying to answer this as calmly as I can. No I/P is not a minor conflict nor is it an excuse to hate jewish people as israel the state is not a representative of the jewish population. I have no idea who you are but you obviously follow me elsewhere too. So if you want we can talk this out with relevant literature and experiences brought. I am heartbroken daily. This is not impersonal to me.

[salvadorbonaparte]

Langblr Reactivation Challenge

Week 1 - Day 2 - Goals

Spanish

add as source language

regain confidence speaking

read more Spanish books I own (especially Don Quixote)

watch el ministerio del tiempo

re-read grammar workbook

Romanian

add as source language

read poetry collection and Dracula copy

Finish Teach Yourself

Finish Duolingo course

Yiddish

read classic literature (especially Tevye and Dybbuk)

talk to a native speaker

Finish Colloquial and In Eynem

Finish Duolingo course

Croatian

add as (potential) source language

Finish Teach Yourself

learn more about differences to Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin

learn alphabet/pronunciation

Korean

be able to do small talk

be able to order food at Korean restaurant

settle on textbook

finish learning writing system/pronunciation

[malvolios-yellow-stockings]

5, 11 and 14 for the ask thing 😌

The ask thing in question

Thanks for the questions! <3

So, I'm a bit of a cheater because I'm Serbian and will probably be choosing Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin bits of media as well. Our languages are completely mutually intelligible so I don't care 😎 (also: *is a sucker for Yugonostalgia*, bratstvo i jedinstvo etc.)

5) Favourite song in your native language?

I'm a huge Azra fan so my faves by them include: Ako znaš bilo što; 2.30; Čudne navike; Pit... i to je Amerika; Krvava Meri; Hladni prsti; Balkan; Gracija; Užas je moja furka; Proljeće je 13. u decembru; 3N; (I'm just gonna stop here)

Darko Rundek - Apokalipso; Ruke; Makedo

Miladin Šobić - Đon; Ne pokušavaj mjenjat me; Prođoh gradom; Od druga do druga

From VIS Idoli - Moja si; Maljčiki; Odbrana & Nemo

I'd also recommend the following bands - Dobri Isak, Šarlo Akrobata (one of my favourite bands actually), EKV & Haustor

There are many others, but I'll leave it here for the sake of y'all.

11) Favourite native writer/poet?

Oof, reluctant to admit but I don't read a lot of literature written by native authors (trying to turn this round though!)

Poet - Branko Miljković hands down

Writer - Ivo Andrić (for his short stories and "The Bridge on the Drina" i.e. "Na Drini ćuprija") and Meša Selimović (for "Death and the the Dervish" i.e. "Derviš i smrt")

14) Do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?

Current state of affairs - Nope. Our TV shows are mass produced, cheap insipid telenovelas.

I do enjoy our cinema of yore though - Profesionalac; Maratonci Trče Počasni Krug (The Marathon Family); Balkanski Špijun are all a great start for getting into Yugo-cinema. I'd be glad to recommend some more

[sportyconnect]

Introduction The Serbs (Serbian: Срби, romanized: Srbi, pronounced [sr̩̂bi]) are a South Slavic ethnic group native to Southeastern Europe who shares a common Serbian ancestry, tradition, historical past, and language. They primarily dwell in Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Slovenia, Germany, and Austria. In addition, they represent an extensive diaspora with several communities throughout Europe, the Americas, and Oceania. Historical past The Serbs are among the oldest Slavic peoples, whose historical past might be retraced to the sixth century. They first settled in the Balkans in the seventh century, and over the centuries, they performed a significant function within the area's historical past. The Serbs have a wealthy tradition and heritage; their language is likely one of the most generally spoken in Southeastern Europe. Tradition Serbian tradition is a rich and numerous mixture of Slavic, Byzantine, and Ottoman influences. The Serbs are identified for their hospitality, love of music and dance, and robust sense of nationwide id. Serbian delicacies can be famed for their hearty dishes, resembling pljeskavica (a grilled minced meat patty), ćevapi (grilled minced meat sausages), and gibanica (a layered cheese pie). Language The Serbian is a South Slavic language spoken by around 12 million people worldwide. It's intently associated with the Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin languages; these four languages are also known as Serbo-Croatian. Serbian is written within the Cyrillic alphabet, an extremely inflected language with a fancy system of noun circumstances. Faith Most Serbs are Japanese Orthodox Christians, and the Serbian Orthodox Church is Serbia's biggest non secular denomination. The Serbian Orthodox Church has an extended and wealthy historical past and considerably grown Serbian tradition and society. Demographics Round 12 million Serbs worldwide, of whom about 7 million dwell in Serbia. There are additionally critical Serbian populations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Slovenia, Germany, and Austria. Notable Serbs Many notable Serbs have made essential contributions to the world in various fields, including science, artwork, literature, music, and sports. A number of the most well-known Serbs embrace: Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American inventor, and engineer, is taken account to be one of the influential figures in the historical past of electrical energy Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, a Serbian philologist and linguist who's credited with standardizing the Serbian language Jovan Jovanović Zmaj, a Serbian poet and youngsters writer Petar I Petrović Njegoš, a Montenegrin prince-bishop and poet who is taken into account to be the best Montenegrin poet of all time Novak Djokovic, a Serbian skilled tennis participant who's extensively thought of to be one of many most significant tennis gamers of all time Conclusion The Serbs are proud and resilient folks with a wealthy historical past and tradition. They've made significant contributions to the world in varied fields and proceeded to play an essential function in the growth of Southeastern Europe. FAQs What's the capital of Serbia? The capital of Serbia is Belgrade. What's the official language of Serbia? The official language of Serbia is Serbian. What are the critical religions in Serbia? The most critical religions in Serbia are Japanese Orthodoxy, Islam, and Catholicism. What are a few of the hottest vacation locations in Serbia? A few of Serbia's hottest vacation locations embrace Belgrade, Novi Unhappy, Niš, and the Fruška Gora mountains. What are a few of the most well-known Serbian meals? Some well-known Serbian meals embrace pljeskavica, ćevapi, and gibanica. I hope this text has answered your questions concerning the Serbs.

[linguistlist-blog]

Books, Clitics in the wild

This collective monograph is the first data-oriented, empirical in-depth study of the system of clitics on Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. It fills the gap between the theoretical and normative literature by including solid data on variation found in dialects and spoken language and obtained from massive Web Corpora and speakers’ acceptability judgements. The authors investigate three primary sources of variation: inventory, placement and morphonological processes. A separate part of the book is http://dlvr.it/SgNvcn

[dnalrevenblr]

Pet Stoljeća Hrvatske Književnosti

[otherpplnation]

752. Lejla Kalamujic

Lejla Kalamujic is the author of the novel-in-stories Call Me Esteban, available from Sandorf Passage. Translated by Jennifer Zoble.

Kalamujic is an award-winning queer writer from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Call Me Esteban received the Edo Budisa literary award in 2016 and it was the Bosnian-Herzegovinian nominee for the European Union Prize for Literature in the same year. 

Jennifer Zoble translates Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian- and Spanish-language literature. Her translation of Mars by Asja Bakic (Feminist Press, 2019) was selected by Publishers Weekly for the fiction list in its "Best Books 2019" issue. She contributed to the Belgrade Noir anthology (Akashic Books, 2020), and her work has been published in McSweeney's, Lit Hub, Words Without Borders, Washington Square, The Iowa Review, and The Baffler, among others. She's a clinical associate professor in the interdisciplinary Liberal Studies program at NYU.

***

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[linguisten]

Hi ✨ In regards to a recent post of urs stating that Urdu/Hindi aren’t different, I wanted to let you know that the two are admittedly quite different. Although both are derived from Hindustaani, Hindi (due to being spoken primarily by Hindus prior to the division of South Asia) contains more sanskrit (the text used in Hindu holy books) whereas urdu has more Classical Arabic (the text used in the Quran as this language was often spoken by Muslims of the area) & Persian Muslims who (1/3)

conquered the area at a time) influences. The differences are more profound in their respective literature. Not to mention, there are mild differences in pronunciation & the scripts are entirely different. They are some overlaps due to the speakers interacting or being neighbors. However, by suggesting the two languages are essentially the same negates their complexity and their historically rich culture. Although a urdu speaker might understand some Hindi & vice versa, it typically (2/3)

occurs on a basic surface level. In other words, it might be difficult to use more elevated language or vocabulary. It is better to get insight on such languages from native speakers rather than relying on linguists who are confined to an outsider view of the language and it’s culture and history. I hope this made sense- take care 🌷✨ (3/3)

---------------------------------------------------

This is the same with Malay/Indonesian or Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian. There are strong extralinguistic (historical, cultural, political) reasons to treat these as separate entities, the linguistic reasons, however, are much less compelling. 

cf Wikipedia

[theforeverlearner]

About me

26 years old

Woman

French-Bosnian living in France

Graduated in 2022 with a Master's degree in International and European Law

Currently working full time

I started in September 2024 a second bachelor's degree in Slavistic (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrian, Serbian) – online program.

Languages I speak: French (C2), English (C2), German (C1), Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian (B2)

Languages I would like to learn one day: Spanish, Korean or Mandarin

Current language goals: pass the Goethe Zertifikat C1, pass the TOEIC exam and finish my bachelor in BCMS.

I enjoy reading!

I also practice yoga and I run quite often. I am currently training for a 21km run.

I'm an ENTP type.

Weirdly enough, I have a horrible memory! Makes my life a little bit harder than necessary.

[rotzaprachim]

what are your favourite languages?

OHHH ThIS is such a good question thank you! And I’m very much an OH SHINY now I cannot FOCUS type of person but! from the top and in no particular order: italian (the only aside from english i can even kind of speak and i really love finding random new words in it. learned a tea towell was a strofinaccio yesterday. incredible, and also i love the regional languages and dialects and differences), Hebrew both biblical and modern (hard as hell esp w vocabs but no lingusitic concept slaps harder with roots), Arabic (ditto with roots, my favorite dialect is al-sham/Levantine dialect of Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, and Syria, I particularly love the sound), also Greek- I’ve never even tried to learn it but again with the deep deep history and i heard an anecdote about Greek trucks having metafora written on them because it’s a transfer and my brain was like. record scratch! i love langauges that feel like they’re stitching together all these strata of history and culture, the present and the past, ANYWAY 

some assorted OTHERS i love: Bengali/Bangla, everything about it is gorgeous and the LITERATURE! Tagalog- my Heritage Language (tm) have to be a bit

also have some friends that are functionally family that speak Korean and would love to learn that! Also just out of interest- Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian was something I wrote about for a paper and it is SUCH a lovely language. 

[mfaunlv]

Meet the New Class!

It is our pleasure to announce the 17 writers who will join our UNLV community this coming Fall 2019 semester! Congratulations to everyone, and welcome to Vegas!

PHD/BLACK MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE FELLOWS

Robert Ren is a writer and teacher in New York. He has a BA from the University of Chicago and an MFA from Columbia University. Having escaped a corporate career, he currently tutors kids in standardized test prep. He managed to avoid the whole college admissions scandal, but that's only because his photoshop skills are terrible.

Dorothy Solomon (not pictured)

MFA Fiction

Bronwyn Scott-McCharen was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi and graduated from Hendrix College in 2014 with a degree in Sociology and Anthropology. She then lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina for three years, where she immersed herself in the country's vibrant political culture under the guise of academic research. Her interests outside of writing fiction include travel, photography, international politics and history (especially Cold War history). She is currently hard at work on two novels in distinct stages of development--one completed manuscript in need of polish and another in the earliest phase of drafting and intensive research. She speaks Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese and hopes to soon add Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian to her budding repertoire of languages.

Mir Arif developed the idea of storytelling at an early age from strangers—astrologers, street magicians, herbal medicine sellers and other con-artists—frequenting the quiet alleys of his childhood neighborhood in Comilla, a small town in southern Bangladesh. He graduated from University of Dhaka with a degree in International Relations and worked as a staff writer for Arts & Letters. His short stories have appeared in various magazines and e-zines in the US, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. One of his short stories was longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2019. He likes to hike and spend time with parakeets.

Karen Gu's fiction has appeared in Paper Darts and The Margins and is forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly. She has been awarded fellowships from Kundiman, the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat, and the Loft Literary Center. After five years in Chicago and four years in Minneapolis, she is looking forward to the desert.

Mohammed Jahama often introduces himself as Mo. He likes to write about those kinds of borderland identities and to talk about words. And is excited and grateful for the opportunity to do such things at UNLV.

Sylvia Fox has too many interests and a wandering soul, which is why she writes fiction. Most recently, she spent the last two years in Baltimore, MD, surrounded and inspired by artists. So many aspects of her identity have led her to believe in the subversive power of showing up, taking up space, and creating space for others. She looks forward to continuing to explore this in writing and in community with others.

MFA Poetry

Nick Barnette, an Alabama native, attended Texas Christian University where he received a BA in English and BS in Film-Television-and-Digital Media. Upon graduation, Nick received a Fulbright Fellowship to Greece where he taught ESL in an elementary school in Athens.

Sarah Spaulding is a Tennessee native and a lover of the mountains that raised her. She graduated summa cum laude with her BA in psychology and English with an emphasis in creative writing from Carson-Newman University. There she discovered her penchant for digging around in people’s heads. She often writes poems to dig herself out of her own head. Her work appears in Tennessee’s Best Emerging Poets, Aletheia, Ampersand, The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, and soon-to-be a guide to Southwestern Iceland. When she’s not busy exploring the mire of humanity, Sarah enjoys dancing in the sunshine, petting other people’s dogs, and helping her father type his memoir.

Jo O’Lone-Hahn is from rural Pennsylvania, and is now on her way to Las Vegas, continuing on her lifelong mission to see the world. She has a B.A. in poetry, studio art, and religious studies from Hampshire College. She writes poems that focus on misunderstood people, naiveté, and the imagination inherent in remembering. Jo has held jobs such as: social worker, tattoo-shop-front-desk-chick, archivist, and tarot-reader-on-the-streets. She is also a member of the Departure Collective, a literary group which conducts workshops, organizes poetry readings, and creates chapbooks. When she’s not writing, she makes mixed-media artworks, wanders around, and befriends grumpy old men.

Nicholas Gruber is a native of Wisconsin, where he earned a BA in Economics from UW-Milwaukee. He is an emerging poet, and--hand to God--a human.

Kathryn McKenzie is a Las Vegas native with a BA in English. She drinks enough tea to match the annual consumption of the entire country of Ireland, and prefers snuggling up in her reading chair with a book, toast, and tea to almost anything in the world. Beyond her deep love of poetry and literature, her passions include: asking to pet every dog she sees, cracking her back after standing up in the movie theater, planning Halloween costumes years in advance, and talking about all the parties she is going to throw, but never actually throwing them. Her poetry has appeared in Neon Dreams and Unincorporated, and her interest in publishing has led her to work with Interim, Witness, and Helen: a literary magazine.

MFA Nonfiction

Christina Berke is a Libra and a teacher from Los Angeles.

Jordon Smith, raised among the Tetons in Wyoming, is a nonfiction writer who enjoys the pleasures and curiosities of the natural world. She completed her undergraduate degree at Utah State University where she met her husband. After graduating, she and her husband moved to Oklahoma where they welcomed a baby boy. Jordon discovered a love of distance running during her time in Oklahoma and is currently training for a marathon in July. When she is not running, she is working in the public library, taking long car rides, or watching children's television shows.

At first look, Soni Brown's life is a series of parodies. She is an immigrant who planned and spent her first vacation in Dubuque, Iowa in January; a former flight attendant afraid of heights and a classically trained chef who prefers Stouffer's frozen meals. As a nonfiction writer, Soni uses her journalism training to write about women, immigrants, and the vagaries of life. A wife and mom since 2016, she is constantly trying to have it all especially a partner who picks up after himself. At the end of the world, you will find Soni nursing a tumbler of herby gin while recounting the year she spent in Brooklyn with Jay-Z. So what if he doesn't know her.

Alyse Burnside: I am a writer and educator currently living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I received by B.A in English and Gender Studies from the University of Iowa. While I consider myself primarily an essayist, I am interested in working between the confines of genre, combining poetry, narrative, and speculative nonfiction. I am currently working on a collage project of interviews with spiritualists, metaphysical myth, and the neuroscience behind how one creates their own reality. When I’m not writing or working, I am reading, traveling, or watching reality T.V. I am thrilled to be attending UNLV in the fall and am excited to meet the desert for the very first time.

[fyrapartnersearch]

Hello, hi, hey there, how are you?

So I’ve already made two posts about looking for roleplay partners on my tumlr (@kaliguza) and here are the first and the second one; but here I am again, reunited with this lovely platform to make my ultimate RP partner post where I will have all my information and all my ideas in one place, easily accessible and convenient for all of you.

I am a 20 year old student who has way too much time on my hands and I choose to spend all my time roleplaying and doing other things that will never help me with anything in th future, but who cares, right?

I have about six years of roleplay experience and consider myself to be literate and able to write in Russian, English and Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian. Obviously, my prefered language to roleplay in would be English, since I’ve had very few RPs in other languages.

Now that we got the language out of the way let’s talk about the writing. I consider RPing to be something like writing a novel together, it’s a way of two artists coming together to create a piece of art. I would ask of you to be literate and willing to cooperate in building a plot as well as building the characters. The least I ask for is a single paragraph and pretty much all I ask for is for the plot to constantly go forward, meaning timeskips and other similar things can be incorporated.

I love characters. Both mine and those of my partners, they are usually my favorite part of the roleplay, I love seeing them develop and take on a personality of their own through the events of the RP. I’m a sucker for character development as well as romance, although I no longer ask for romance to be one of the main plot points of my roleplays, I love having it and I love having it mentioned.

I always pay multiple characters,but I don’t ask that my partners do the same. Honestly, some people can have one character that is more relevant to the plot than ten others, and that is okay.

An another thing absolutely love is smut. It needs to be incorporated well into the plot for me to enjoy it, but I definitely like writing a good sex scene here and there. 

Now let’s talk about the things I don’t like so much before we get on to the ideas I have, shall we?

I can’t deal with once-a-week replies, unless my partner is having some kind of issues, is on vacation etc. for a limited period of time, but don’t even bother texting me if you can’t give out semi-consistent replies, at least in the beginning of the roleplay. (Rapid fire is the best)

Don’t force anything onto me or my character, please.

Don’t ask for me to do scat, vore, watersports or anything regarding furries and we should be alright.

I no longer do high fantasy or medieval, I’m so sorry but I’m just extremely over it and I can’t be bothered with those kind of plots.

No slice of life. Not ever, it bores me.

Let’s move onto my ideas!

I love deep plots with deep meanings and multi-layered strong characters with complex backstories, those will always be and have always been my cravings and can be incorporated in any of these ideas.

-an apocalypse RP

-something based off of Disney movies/a Disney movie

-anything involving bands

-anything involving history

-murder mysteries

-superheroes

-RPs based off of the classics of literature(new and old)

-the backstories of painters, musicians, historical figures, psychologists, physicists all of it

-sci-fi

Please note that I’m willing to do extremely dark stuff and have very few limits, but I’m also willing to do things that are filled with humor. Pretty much ready for anything.

I would strongly advise you read my other RP advertisements as well, just so you can make an informed decision on whether or not you want to roleplay with me.

CONTACT ME HERE:

tumblr: kaliguza

discord: calibottoms#1504

gmail: kely.xoxo@gmail.com

kik:flappyunicornxx

[anotherwaytosay]

We're ringing out National Translation Month at Molasses Books, September 3oth at 8PM, with an incredible trio of translators-writers. Plugging Asymptote hard here to direct you to both S.J. Pearce's new translation(s) of Psalm 9 that reveals the psalm's many-voiced awe and resentment, and a selection of Suzana Vuljevic's translation of "Airplane Without an Engine" by Ljubomir Micić with a white sharp "Hellooooooooooooooooooo / I leap headlong into my ideoplan". If you had the good fortune to attend Us&Them's November 2021 reading, you'll remember Jennifer Shyue, whose translations of Julia Wong Kcomt's poetry has been published by Ugly Duckling Presse's Señal series as Vice-Royal-ties.

*** S.J. Pearce is a writer and translator who lives in New York City. Her poetry has appeared in The Laurel Review, The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Orotone, and Second Chance Lit, as well as in the anthology Strange Fire (Teaneck, 2021); she has also work forthcoming in Asymptote and The Plenitudes. Her first chapbook manuscript was a finalist for the Laurel Review's 2021 Midwest Chapbook Competition and she was long-listed for the 2021 River Heron Review Poetry Prize. She is a member of the 2022 cohort of the Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program. In the scholarly realm, she publishes on the history of translation in the medieval Mediterranean world. Her first academic monograph was the recipient of the 2019 La Corónica International Book Award. Suzana Vuljevic is a historian, writer and translator who works from Albanian and Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian. Suzana holds a Ph.D. in History and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. Her writing and translations have appeared in Zenithism (1921–1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology (Academic Studies Press, 2022), AGNI, Asymptote, Eurozine, Exchanges, and elsewhere. She is a 2022 ALTA Travel Fellow and an editor at EuropeNow. & Jennifer Shyue is a translator from Spanish and an assistant editor at New Vessel Press. Her work has appeared most recently in AGNI, Astra Magazine, and Poetry Daily. Her translations include Julia Wong Kcomt’s chapbook Vice-royal-ties (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021) and Augusto Higa Oshiro’s novel The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu (Archipelago Books, 2023). She can be found at shyue.co. *** THROUGHOUT THE REST OF SEPTEMBER Trafika Europe Radio's programming will feature international authors and works in translation from the likes of Thora Hjörleifsdóttir with translator Meg Matich, Victor Jestin with translator Sam Taylor, Italian poet and novelist Daniele Mencarelli, and more!

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 19 at Greenlight Bookstore's Fort Greene location, Emma Ramadan presents her translation of Barbara Molinard's Panics in conversation with Kate Zambreno SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 25th at the Parkside Lounge, the Spoken Word Sunday Series presents a special event for National Translation Month featuring Soodabeh Saeidnia and Adriana Scopino.

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 27th in the virtual realm, Words Without Borders presents World in Verse: a Reading and Celebration of International Poetry with Najwan Darwish, Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Samira Negrouche, Marilyn Hacker, Jeannette Clariond, Samantha Schnee 

*** Eager to see you in your sweaters and cords! xoxo, Janet