Chosen Tongue

Yael van der Wouden is a writer and teacher of creative writing and comparative literature in the Netherlands. Her debut novel, The Safekeep, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024 and has been translated into over fourteen languages. Her essay on Dutch identity and Jewishness, "On (Not) Reading Anne Frank", has received a notable mention in The Best American Essays 2018.  We discussed...

Pegah Ouji is an Iranian American writer who writes in Farsi and English. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Joyland, Epiphany, Fugue, Split Lip among others. She has been a scholarship recipient from Kundiman, Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute, Hudson Valley Writer's Center, Literary Arts, Grub Street, and Shipman Agency. She was a 2024 Emerging Writer Fellow at Smokelong Quarterly. She...

Sumitra Singam is a Malaysian-Indian-Australian writer and psychiatrist living in Melbourne.  Her work has been published widely, nominated for a number of Best Of anthologies, and was selected on Best Microfictions 2024.  She works in mental health. We discussed how Sumitra incorporates words from different languages into her stories and the impact of her Malay literary tradition on her writing s...

Aleksandar  Hemon   is the author of  The Lazarus Project,  which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, as well as  The Question of Bruno ;  Nowhere Man ,  Love and Obstacles, The Book of My Lives ,  The Making of Zombie Wars,  as well as a couple of non-fiction books. His most recent novel is  The World and All That It Holds  (2023) Aleksandar  Hem...

Miriam Calleja is an award-winning Maltese bilingual freelance poet, nonfiction/fiction writer, workshop leader, and translator. She is the author of three poetry collections, two chapbooks, and several collaborative works. Her poetry has been published in anthologies and in translation worldwide. She has recently been Highly Commended for a translated poem by the Stephen Spender Trust. Her latest...

Grace Loh Prasad is the author of The Translator's Daughter (Mad Creeks Books/Ohio University Press 2024), a debut memoir about living between languages, navigating gloss and the search for belonging. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Literary hub, Longreads, Guernica, Brevity, The Offing, Oldster Magazine, and elsewhere. A member of the Writers Grotto and the AAPI Writers' Collectiv...

Leila Aboulela is the first-ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. Nominated three times for the Orange Prize (now the Women's Prize for Fiction), she is the author of numerous novels, including  Bird Summons,   The Kindness of Enemies, The Translator , a New York Times Notable Book of the Year,  Minaret  and  Lyrics Alley , which was Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Her co...

  Lucy Tan is the author  of the novel  What We Were Promised , which was a Barnes & Nobles Discover Pick, a Washington Post Best Book of 2018, and longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is a recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Originally from New Jersey, Lucy lives and writes in Seattle.  You can read about Lucy's experien...

Hisham Matar   was born in New York City to Libyan parents. He spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo and has lived most of his life in London.  He is the author of the novels  In the Country of Men , which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and  Anatomy of a Disappearance.   His two memoirs are:  The Return,  which was the recipient of a 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Award, the...

Jesse Lee Kercheval is an award-winning artist, writer, poet, and translator. Her most recent books include the poetry collections, I want to tell you, and Un Pez Dorado no te sirve para nada. Selected poems translated by Ezequiel Zaindenwerg and published in Uruguay by editorial Yaugarù, which also published Jesse's collection of Spanish language poetry, Extranjera/Stranger. Jesse's other books i...

Jenny Liao is a Chinese -American writer born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of two children's books, Everyone Loves Lunchtime but Zia and Everyone Loves Career Day but Zia.  Jenny's writing has been featured in The New Yorker and Bon Appetit. Jenny currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two Calico cats, Donald and Bigné, and you can find her on Instagram and Twit...

Avra Margariti is a queer author, Greek sea monster and Rhysling-nominated poet with the fondness for the dark and the darling. Avra's work haunts publications such as Strange Horizons, The Deadlands,  F &SF, Podcastle, Asimov's, Vastarien and Reckoning. You can find Avra on Twitter @AvraMargariti. Together we discussed Avra's early publishing experience and the inspiration she found in Greek auth...

Alina   Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama. Alina is the author of several publications, including a creative nonfiction chapbook,  Ribald  (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and  Dor , which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection,  Every Mask I Tried On , won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018).  Alina 's poems,...

Ana Maria Caballero is a Colombian-American literary artist whose work explores how biology delimits societal and cultural rites, ripping the veil off romanticized motherhood and questioning notions that package sacrifice as a virtue. She's the recipient of the Beverly International Prize, Colombia's José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize, the Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize, a Future Arts Writer A...

Alison Mooney is a poet, storyteller and dancer who has lived in France, the US, Ireland, Germany, and now lives in Brussels.   For many years she worked across Europe in the private sector, before joining the European Parliament 10 years ago. In 2020, Alison won the Cicero Speechwriting Award, from the US Professional Speechwriters Association, for a poetic motivational speech. In 2022, she was a...

  Mordecai Martin is an Ashkenazi Jewish writer, a Bisexual Psychiatric Survivor, an aspiring translator of Yiddish and Spanish, and a fifth generation New Yorker. He lives in Washington Heights, Manhattan with his wife, son, and cat. He is an MFA candidate at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA. In his non-fiction he writes to explore family, history, place, and mental illness. In his fiction, he s...

Victoria   Buitron  is an award-winning writer who hails from Ecuador and resides in Connecticut. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. Her debut memoir-in-essays,  A Body Across Two Hemispheres , was the 2021 Fairfield Book Prize winner. A VONA fellow, her work has been selected for 2022's  Best Small Fictions  and  Wigleaf's Top 50 . In 2023, she received the  Artist...

Pim Wangtechawat is a Thai-Chinese writer from Bangkok, Thailand. She graduated with Distinction from  Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland  with a Masters in Creative Writing. Her debut novel,  The Moon Represents My Heart , was published by OneWorld Publications in the UK in June 2023.  Television rights sold after a competitive auction to 21 Laps and Netflix, with actress Gemma Chan set to s...

Andrea   Jurjević is a Croatian poet, writer, and literary translator living in the US. She is the author of two poetry collections and a chapbook: In Another Country, winner of the 2022 Saturnalia Books Prize; Small Crimes, winner of the 2015 Philip Levine Prize; and Nightcall, which was the 2021 ACME Poem Company Surrealist Series selection.  Andrea 's book-length translations from Croatian incl...

Mathieu   Cailler  is the author of seven books: one novel, two short story collections, two volumes of poetry, and two children's titles. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in over one hundred publications, including  The Saturday Evening Post  and the  Los Angeles Times . He is the recipient of numerous awards, most notably the Shakespeare Award, the Short Story America Prize, the New...

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist from Athens, Greece, and the author of We Fade with Time, a flash fiction collection published in 2022 by Alien Buddha Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and Best Small Fiction nominated writer, Mileva's work can be found in many journals, such as The Chestnut Review, New World Writing, Milk Candy Review, The Bureau Dispatch, and others. We d...

Francesco Dimitri is the author of four books in English and several more in his native Italian. Originally from the Southern region of Puglia, Francesco moved to London at 27 without speaking a word of English and a decade later he published his first book in his adoptive tongue, To Read Aloud.  Three more followed and his latest novel, The Dark Side of the Sky, will be published next Spring.   W...

Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in The Rumpus, Fractured Lit, Flash Frog, Gigantic Sequins, Cream City Review, Cincinnati Review miCRo, Indiana Review, Craft, swamp pink, Pinch and Moon City Review, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. Read Hard Skin from Juventud Press and Kahi a...

Andre Aciman is an Italian-American writer , b orn and raised in Alexandria, Egypt . He currently is a distinguished professor at the  CUNY Graduate Center,   where he teaches the history of literary theory  and the works of  Marcel Proust. Andre is the author of a memoir, Out of Egypt, and several novels, including Call Me by Your Name, whose film adaptation, written by James Ivory, won an Oscar...

Nabeela Ahmed is a writer, multilingual poet, spoken word artist and storyteller. She writes and shares her work in English, Urdu and Pahari. Her poetry was the main feature of Keighley Arts and Film Festival in 2020. She teaches creative writing and poetry workshops. She has had poems published in England, America, Pakistan and India. Her poetry manuscript was shortlisted by Verve Poetry Press in...