Three Percent Podcast

On this episode, Daniel Hahn OBE joins Chad to talk about his new book, If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation . They discuss how the book foregrounds the roles creativity and interpretation play in translation, what a good companion piece it is to Hahn’s Catching Fire: A Translator’s Diary , the ways this book may bring people to both translation and Shakespeare, and the...

On this episode, special guest Aryan Omar Hassan talks about Henar Press and their first publications: Gābor by Seyed Qader Hedayati, translated from the Kurdish by Chiya Parvizpur & Hourieh Maleki Qouzloo; I Am Going to Kill Somebody by Firat Ceweri, translated from the Kurdish by Jeannette Okur; and Who’s Afraid of Kurdistan?: An Anthology of Contemporary Plays , edited by Aryan himself. He also...

Arunava Sinha—professor, journalist, translator of over 100 works, including The Laboratory by Rabindranath Tagore—discusses his new venture, Chowringhee Press , his career in translation, the literary scene in India writ large, and provides a list of books to check out if you’re looking for entryways into South Asia’s diverse literary scene (see below). Books published by Chowringhee Press: I Mur...

Jeffrey Angles (translator of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again and many non-Kaiju related titles) joins Chad and special guest Joanne Bernardi ( Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement , Provenance and Early Cinema (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema (ed.), and the multimedia resource, ReEnvisioning Japan ) to talk about the recent release of The Luminou...

On this episode of the Three Percent Podcast, French translator and University of Rochester MALTS grad, Allison Charette, joins Chad to discuss her most recent translation: Return by Raharimanana (Seagull Books). A structurally complex, evocative work about memory, trauma, family, and beauty, Return is also a great introduction to the modern history of Madagascar—a history filled with political up...

Leif Høghaug (who is currently translating Finnegans Wake into Norwegian) and David M. Smith join Chad and Kyle Semmel to talk about The Calf , one of the strangest books to come out in 2025. They provide curious readers with some guideposts to approaching this book, talk about influences and specific Norwegian dialects, David’s choice to write this in the Appalachian dialect his dad speaks, decid...

George Henson (Pitol’s translator) and Mark Haber ( Lesser Ruins , Ada ) join Chad to celebrate the recent release in English of the third volume in Sergio Pitol’s “Carnival Triptych,” Married Life . They talk about that book, but also spend a lot of time discussing The Art of Flight and the “Trilogy of Memory,” which propelled Pitol into the global spotlight both when it came out in the original...

Dropping on the same day that Hagfish’s first publication— To Smithereens by Rosalyn Drexler—was named as one of the New York Times ’s “ 100 Notable Books of 2025 ,” this podcast explores the Hagfish business model with its cofounders, Julia Ringo and Naomi Huffman. They discuss how the press came to be, what draws them to particular titles, the difficulty of distribution, why they’re only doing t...

Christine Swedowsky, the newest publisher of World Editions , and Michelle Mirabella, translator of Catalina Infante’s The Cracks We Bear join Chad to discuss the various eras of World Editions and how an indie press can evolve over time, and a few upcoming titles. The conversation focuses on Mirabella & Infante’s forthcoming novel, discussing how the book is much more than another book about moth...

Quick Reminder: All Open Letter books either written or translated by women are on sale for 40% off to celebrate Women in Translation Month through August 31st! Shop the whole collection here ! Jen Calleja, translator, author, musician, recent PhD recipient, joins Chad to talk about her recent book, Fair: The Life-Art of Translation . They discuss the origins of the book, the various types of “tra...

In our ongoing celebration of Women in Translation Month, Chad talked to Suzanne Jill Levine about Unfaithful: A Translator’s Memoir , recently released by Bloomsbury Academic. They discuss her life as a translator who was there during “The Boom” and her work with Manuel Puig (who deserves another rediscovery), Adolfo Bioy Casares (Chad relates his Lost story about The Invention of Morel ), Severo...

On this special 200th episode of the Three Percent Podcast, Tom Roberge—original co-host, former publicist for New Directions, co-founder of Riffraff Books, and current head of residencies at the Jan Michalski Foundation—returns to talk about life in Switzerland, his media diet, Swiss support for culture, how he no longer follows the Mets very closely, and much more. A number of books and authors...

On this episode, Blake Butler ( Molly , Void Corporation , Uxa. Gov , the Dividual Substack) joins Chad to discuss his recent piece, “ What I Want In an Ideal Publisher .” They discuss various disconnects in publishing, what makes a great indie publisher, the possibility of doing things in a new way, financial transparency and editorial vision, and much more. Intro and outro music is “Couldn’t Get...

In this episode, Tom Comitta ( The Nature Book , Patchwork ) joins Chad to talk about their book(s) People’s Choice Literature: The Most Wanted and Unwanted Novels , for which they used survey results, The Bestseller Code , various best-selling novels, and the OpenAI Playground to write two very entertaining novels: one using everything people want in a book, the other doing the exact opposite. Th...

In the final entry in this series of podcasts on the NEA (for now . . . there may be a return to industry-based Three Percent episodes in the near future), Chad welcomes Hilary Plum ( Cleveland State University Poetry Center , Rescue Press , author of State Champ ) and Lissie Jaquette (executive director of Words Without Borders , translator from the Arabic of Minor Detail , Thirteen Months of Sun...

Our series on the National Endowment for the Arts continues by talking with three organizations and publishers about both the specific impact of the May 2nd “termination/withdrawal” emails, and the broader impact the shuttering of the NEA could have on the literary arts in the long term. Featured on this episode are: Michael Holtmann of the Center for the Art of Translation , Adam Levy of Transit...

This is part one of a two part series (for now) on the National Endowment for the Arts and the, by now, much reported on letters that NEA grantees received on May 2nd, 2025 terminating or withdrawing their approved funding. In this scripted episode, Chad goes over much of the history of the founding of the NEA, its core mission, the “Culture Wars” in the 1990s, trying to articulate how things are...

As a special episode of the Three Percent Podcast, Kaija Straumanis (curator of the Latvian Triptych , translator of The River by Laura Vinogradova) discussed language, literature, art, life, and guilt with the two other translators who contributed to the triptych: Ian Gwin, who translated Berlin by Andris Kuprišs, and Uldis Balodis, who did Birthday by Jana Egle. It’s a fun, illuminating conversa...

Every spring, I teach a “World Literature & Translation” class in which I select 10 translations from 10 languages and 10 different translators—most of which I also haven’t read (but which have been on my “to read” shelves)—and force my students to choose one to receive the “Best Translated Book of the Class” prize. And every spring, I want to share our excitement about these various titles, eithe...

In the penultimate episode of this season, there’s a lot of talk about Melville’s relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne as we get more of Melville’s life as he bounces through time, writes  Moby-Dick  and the creation of “its own kind of reader: an inexhaustible reader. A reader that didn’t yet exist . . .” The " Grifters Gonna Grift " t-shirt is still available and still sexy. Next episode will b...

[Note: If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please resubscribe to this feed. And this one if you listen on Spotify. The others will be going away in the near future.] On the final episode of 2024, Chad, Brian, and Kaija talk about Nico C. and being unmoored from time, last words, footnotes and ellipses, some highlights from the past year, ice, and more. The " Grifters Gonna Grift " t-shirt is still...

[Note: If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please subscribe to  this feed.] Lori Feathers ( Across the Pond podcast,  Involutions of the Seashell , Interabang Books , and Republic of Consciousness Prize USA ) joins Chad and Kaija to talk about prizes— Melvill  is longlisted for the NBCC Greg Barrios Prize for Translated Literature!—the narrative structure of  Melvill , Nico C., and vampires. A lot...

[Note: If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please resubscribe to this feed. The other one will be going away in the near future.] With Melville's  Fidèle  receding into the dark distance, we turn our attention to Rodrigo Fresán's  Melvill , a bombastic book about Alan Melvill and Herman and the passing down of stories from one generation to the next. On this special episode, translator Will Vander...

[Note: If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please resubscribe to this feed. The other one will be going away in the near future.] Chad, Brian, and Kaija venture into the darkness and turn off the light on Melville's  The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade , one of the oddest, most slippery books to be included in the Two Month Review. They talk about transcendentalism, self-reliance, Melville's interl...

[Note: If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please resubscribe to this feed. The other one will be going away in the near future.] Opening with a couple of rants, this week's podcast is spicy and also tries to make sense of a few of the more perplexing parts of the book. There's a wonderful interlude in this section from the narrator themselves, and, apparently, nine jokes? And a magic trick involv...