Elemental: Earth Stories
5:30 pm PT | 6:30 pm MT | 7:30 pm CT | 8:30 pm ET
Virtual Event
Point Reyes Books hosts a celebration of the latest installment of the Calico Series from Two Lines Press with translators Jessica Cohen, Allison Charette, and Brian Bergstrom. Moderated by Cristina Rodriguez.
Register for the event on Point Reyes Books event page(opens in a new tab). Don’t forget to pick up a copy of the book(opens in a new tab) while you’re there!
About Elemental
A family’s heirloom stones unearth a story spanning war, illness, and radioactivity. A pipeline installed to protect a town from flooding results in a howling that disturbs the town’s inhabitants. A political prisoner embarks on an epic flight toward freedom, literally blown like a kite in the wind.
A whirlwind of fantastic new writing from Japan, Iran, Norway, Germany, Madagascar, Iraq, Poland, and Israel, this collection of fiction and reportage maps the intimate, ongoing relationship between human civilization and the natural world. Do we set the limits on our existence? Or is it wind, water, fire, and earth that define–even control–us? Borrowing from eco-literature and mythology, Elemental unflinchingly takes up the earth.
“Stone, earth, water, ice, wind, and burning heat. The stories here dig deep and unexpectedly into life’s fundamentals—the elements and the passions—bringing into English, many for the first time, writers of stature from across the globe. A celebration of both storytelling and translation, Elemental is essential, a gift that opens up the pleasures of new worlds.” —Hugh Raffles, author of The Book of Unconformities
About the Calico Series
The Calico Series, published biannually by Two Lines Press, captures vanguard works of translated literature in stylish, collectible editions. Each Calico is a vibrant snapshot that explores one aspect of our present moment, offering the voices of previously inaccessible, highly innovative writers from around the world today.
Jessica Cohen was born in England, raised in Israel, and lives in Denver. She translates contemporary Israeli prose, poetry, and other creative work. She shared the 2017 Man Booker International Prize with David Grossman, for her translation of A Horse Walks into a Bar, and has translated major Israeli writers including Amos Oz, Etgar Keret, Ronit Matalon, and Nir Baram.
Allison M. Charette translates literature from French into English. Her most recent translation, Return to the Enchanted Island by Johary Ravaloson, published in 2019 by AmazonCrossing, is only the second novel to be translated into English from Madagascar. Allison received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship in 2018 for her work on Michèle Rakotoson’s novel Lalana. She also founded the Emerging Literary Translators’ Network in America (ELTNA.org), a networking and support group for early-career translators.
Brian Bergstrom is a Montréal-based lecturer and translator. His translations have appeared in publications including Granta, Aperture, LitHub, Mechademia, The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, and Elemental: Earth Stories. His translation of Trinity, Trinity, Trinity by Erika Kobayashi (Astra House, 2022) won the 2022 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. His most recent translation is Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto (Astra House, 2024) by Marxist philosopher Kōhei Saitō.
Cristina Rodriguez is the Director of Sales and Marketing at A Public Space, arts, and culture magazine, and A Public Space Books. A former bookseller, she is also a Publishers Weekly 2020 Star Watch Honoree, a Bookselling Without Borders fellow, and a 2020 CLMP Firecracker Award judge.