Launch in Toronto
June with PEN Canada

Launch in Banff: June 24

Language Arts – Translating – Interpreting – Writers in Exile

ISBN 1-894773-17-9
$18.95 CDN - $14.95 US
6 * 9 - 125 pages – paper
 

Speaking in Tongues

Editor: Maggie Helwig

Language Arts – Anthology – Literary Criticism

While writers living in exile have much to say, they often lack a space to be heard. Speaking in Tongues offers the personal reflections of writers in exile — many now living in Canada — as they engage with and interrogate the act of translation.
As one writer living in exile has said, “Crossing borders, one after another, is a bloody devastating experience, but an experience done and over. Translating the self into another self through another vocabulary is what we face, right after we have finished the crossing. It is the last border, and it is invisible. And it is there during the ‘translation’ period that we slip away.”

This anthology of exilic writing addresses the experiences and challenges of exiled writers — many working in a second language — and they move to “carry over” their lives from one context to another.

The editor of Speaking in Tongues, Maggie Helwig, sits on the PEN Canada Board of Directors. PEN Canada works within Canada and internationally to promote freedom of expression and aid writers persecuted for the peaceful expression of their ideas. PEN Canada is working to establish partnerships to assist writers whose professional and cultural contributions have been imperiled by the need to leave their countries of origin.

Contributors

Zdenka Acin
Reza Baraheni
Andrea Hila
Martha Kumsa
Fereshteh Molavi
Faruk Myrtaj
Senthilnathan Ratnasabapathy
Benjamin Santamaria Ochoa
George Seremba
Goran Simic
Mehri Yelfani