The Best of Two Lines Press Audio

Now’s your chance to listen to readings from the past 5 years that you may have missed!

In conjunction with publication of Lion Cross Point in April 2018, the Dallas-based Interabang books podcast(opens in a new tab) featured an interview author Masatsugu Ono to talk about childhoold, trauma, and translation.

Isabel Fargo Cole‘s translation of Wolfgang Hilbig‘s The Females was the topic of the Feeling Bookish podcast(opens in a new tab) last fall. The conversation covered divided Germany, gender, why capitalism used to be sexy and what the connection is between communist states and trash cans.

Mexican author and visual artist Verónica Bicecci visited the Bay Area in March 2018 to talk with acclaimed translator(opens in a new tab) Christina MacSweeney about her book Empty Set. A Venn diagram for love, Empty Set traces and reconstructs relationships using geometry, ice cores, and tree rings. It tells a story of holes appearing inside other holes. It is the chronicle of a breakup that results in a journey toward family origins.

A conversation between Man Booker Prize longlisted author Wioletta Greg and local bookstore owner Molly Parent about Greg’s debut novel Swallowing Mercury gave readers the chance to hear from the author herself about her childhood and her experience of growing up in Communist Poland. Listen to the conversation here(opens in a new tab).

In August of 2017 we also brought poet and translator David Larsen to the Bay Area to discuss his translation of 10th-century Arabic lexicographer Ibn Khālawayh’s (opens in a new tab)Names of the Lion(opens in a new tab) with Pt. Reyes Books owner and bookseller extraordinaire Stephen Sparks. Names of the Lion is a thesaurus, a word list, a bestiary with only one beast. It was written as a virtuoso display of philological learning by a man who considered himself the greatest living authority on the Arabic language, and was so considered by others.

In July 2017 “Mexico’s greatest novelist” Yuri Herrera talked with Bay Area writer Caille Millner about his book (opens in a new tab)Kingdom Cons(opens in a new tab). Translated by Lisa Dillman and published by And Other Stories, Kingdom Cons is part surreal fable and part narco-lit romance.

We published Lidija Dimkovska‘s “kaleidoscopic, bighearted novel” A Spare Life in 2016 and hosted her for a 6-city U.S. book tour. She visited Oakland’s Diesel Bookstore (now East Bay Booksellers) and talked about how her generation of writers internalized the Balkan war. She also discussed the awkwardness of being from Macedonia, which was a relatively safe, stable place during the wars, and her love of her native Macedonian language. Listen to the entire interview(opens in a new tab).

If post-modern Brazilian lit is more your thing, check out our event with translator Adam Morris, who translated two books by the late author João Gilberto Noll: Quiet Creature on the Corner and Atlantic Hotel. Morris joined us at the legendary City Lights Booksellers in San Francisco to discuss the life and work of the great Brazilian writer(opens in a new tab). He and Two Lines Press editor CJ Evans dove into what makes Noll such a unique, compelling writer.

Catalan author and journalist Toni Sala discussed The Boys with translator Mara Faye Lethem in November 2015. It was Sala’s first book to appear in English and was called “altogether brilliant” by Kirkus. Their conversation(opens in a new tab) with editor CJ Evans included a bilingual reading from the book and talk of Spain’s economic collapse and moral breakdown and Catalan independence.

You can revisit Baboon, a collection of short stories from leading Danish writer Naja Marie Aidt. The author read from these tense, explosive, surreal stories and was joined by translator and poet Denise Newman for a discussion of the book(opens in a new tab).

In June 2015 translator Ben Paloff was joined by fellow Czech translator Alex Zucker at New York’s Community Bookstore to discuss Paloff’s translation(opens in a new tab) of Richard Weiner’s The Game for Real and Weiner’s other “complex, mystifying fictions.” The Game For Real is the first of Weiner’s books ever translated into English. Called “The Man of Pain” by the sci-fi author Karel Čapek (who popularized the word robot), Richard Weiner is one of European literature’s best-kept secrets.

You can check out even more events on our SoundCloud(opens in a new tab) site.