Asymptote

gratitude, 2014

Matthew Jakubowski 4 Comments

I’d like to say thanks for following the blog this year and reading a few of my posts. I’m looking forward to checking out more of everyone’s work in 2015.

As for the rest of this post, I’ve been incredibly fortunate this year. I got to work with dozens of people who challenged and supported me and, perhaps most importantly, contrary to the past five years or so, no one close to me died. (Raps knuckles to temple.)

To gear up for the work ahead I took a little time to record good things from 2014 in the hope of building on them. And that goes for everything from writing/art projects to more social activism. Here’s a recap in a link-heavy chunk of text. Thanks again for reading truce in 2014!

January: after 30+ subs I sold my first short story, “Killing Off Ray Apada,” to gorse (thanks to editor Susan Tomaselli); was featured in The Guardian’s story, “Year of Reading Women Declared” (thanks to Joanna Walsh and Alison Flood); edited interviews with Anne Carson and Yoshitomo Nara for Asymptote.  February: Continue reading →

Asymptote in Philadelphia

ImageMatthew Jakubowski

On March 29, I hosted the first-ever Asymptote event in Philadelphia. It was part of the journal’s worldwide celebration for its third anniversary and a large and enthusiastic crowd braved the rain on a Saturday night, making for a wonderful time at the Asian Arts Initiative.

Thanks to everyone who attended, and the four readers and musical guest who donated their time! Special thanks to Ann Tetreault of The Spiral Bookcase who did a superb job organizing books sales at the event.

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Author Hilary Plum (They Dragged Them Through the Streets) read a poem by Kym Hyesoon, “My Free Market” (trans. Don Mee Choi), and a new piece of her own fiction, “Cage.”

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Author Ken Kalfus (Equilateral, Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies) read in Russian and English a poem by Aleksey Porvin, “A Dark House is Quietly Collapsing” (trans. J. Kates), and from his short story, “Coup de Foudre,” which appears in the April issue of Harper’s.

Seven members of The Philadelphia Women’s Slavic Ensemble sang three songs from Bulgaria and one from Croatia. It was stunning!

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Author Katherine Hill read an excerpt from Clarice Lispector’s Agua Viva (trans. Stefan Tobler), and from her novel, The Violet Hour.

Translator Vincent Kling read a series of excerpts from his 2013 Schlegel-Tieck Prize-winning translation of the late Swiss author Aglaja Veteranyi’s novel, Why the Child is Cooking in the Polenta. (Kling’s translation of Heimito von Doderer’s Die Strudlhofstiege is forthcoming from New York Review Books.)

Ann Tetreault, right, of The Spiral Bookcase provided books by all four authors who appeared at the event.

A focus for 2014: My reading resolution

Matthew Jakubowski

This is my first post. New year, new things! And to start things off I’m actually going to repeat myself: My reading resolution for 2014 is to read only books by women.

I wrote about this on Dec. 30, 2013, at Asymptote’s blog. A snippet:

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a book at home and my eyes kept being drawn to big books: 2666, The Emperor of Lies, Ulysses, The Satanic Verses, Stone Upon Stone. Thick books with titles and author names in large font—and I noticed all by men. And what about women? I’d studied literature, helped judge the Best Translated Book Award a couple times, and I review books, so I assumed I had lots of big books, a good balance of literary work by everyone from everywhere. In a few minutes’ time though I counted eighteen big, 500-plus-page books by men and just one by a woman: Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex.

The post at Asymptote links to similar writing projects and since it was published Joanna Walsh created the #readwomen2014 hashtag. Read her essay about it here.

Welcome to the blog! Curious to see where this goes.