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Author: Bill Lavender

Bill Lavender founded Lavender Ink, a small press devoted mainly to poetry, in 1995, and he founded Diálogos, an imprint devoted to cross-cultural literatures (mostly in translation) in 2011. He continues to operate the press from his home in New Orleans. You can read an interview with Bill in Jacket2 about the press here: https://jacket2.org/commentary/lavender-ink-interview Bill is also the co-founder of the New Orleans Poetry Festival (nolapoetry.com).

From Única Looking at the Sea

An excerpt from Única Looking at the Sea, by Fernando Contreras Castro, translated by Elaine S. Brooks; the opening: More from long habit than any other principle of order in the world, the sun began to rise, hesitating along the edge of the hill, as if at the last minute it had decided to light one […]

An Excerpt from The Virgin Mountain

From The Virgin Mountain, by Roberto Echavarren, translated by Donald Wellman and the author. A doll of rough wood carved with a knife, dressed in sky blue red flowers with yellow center and yellow with red center, stars that are flowers,  she even has panties, a small square of cloth glued to the perineum, shawl […]

Never Made in America Reviewed on Don Yorty’s Explorations

Don Yorty provides a thoughtful review of both the book by Martín Barea Mattos and Mark Statman‘s translation, along with video of their joint performance in Montevideo at the Mundial Poetico (shot by yours truly). Certain of Barea Mattos’ linguistically playful poems present difficulties in both translation and performance, as does the one you’ll see […]

John Vanderslice new book launch in NYC

Lavender Ink author John Vanderslice (Island Fog, 2014) launches his new book The Last Days of Oscar Wilde (Burlesque Press) at the Oscar Wilde bar in NYC next January 13. Should be a fun and decadent evening. Reserve tickets here.

New Orleans Poetry Festival, 2018

Again this year Lavender Ink/Diálogos is proud to co-sponsor, with Trembling Pillow Press, the New Orleans Poetry Festival. This year the fest will take place April 20-22, 2018, once again at the Healing Center in New Orleans. The site is open and now accepting proposals for panels, readings, workshops, and tables at the small press […]

Recent Writing from North Africa

I’ve been reading Francophone writers of Northern Africa lately and thought to recommend a few that might serve as background to those which have appeared and are appearing from Diálogos. Recent Francophone literature from and of Northern Africa—Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia—ranks as some of the most ambitious, incisive and artistically interesting literary work of the past half […]

Release of Fanon City Meu

Diálogos is proud to be releasing Jaime Luis Huenún’s Fanon City Meu, Spring, 2018, translated by Thomas Rothe. This book takes political poetry in a new direction, where the voices of the colonized and their colonizers form a dissonant choir bearing testimony to the centuries of violence that have shaped Latin America. Inspired by Martinican […]

Hedeen article in Translation Review

The latest issue of Translation Review (#94) features a review by Kate Hedeen of Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems, recently released from Copper Canyon, which cites our “Open Letter” of November 2015. The full text is not available online but the first page can be previewed at the link above.

Release of Exile: Women’s Turn

The death of Nabile Farès in August, 2016, was a great loss to Francophone North African letters. Farès was a Berber, born in Collo, on the Kabylia peninsula, a part of Algeria that was never fully subdued by either Arab or the later French conquerors, and his first language was Berber. He was a teenager during […]

Death of William Bradley

I am saddened to hear, this morning, that recent Lavender Ink author William Bradley has died. While it was obvious to me, both from the writing in his book of essays, Fractals, and from our personal correspondence when we were putting the book out, that his health was failing and his condition likely terminal, he always downplayed […]

The Virgin Mountain, Roberto Echavarren

Just released: The Virgin Mountain, a remarkable long poem by Uruguayan master Roberto Echavarren, translated by Donald Wellman and the author. You don’t know Latin American poetry unless you know Roberto Echavarren. The Virgin Mountain shows off his wit and innovation, his neo-baroque style blended seamlessly with surrealism, translated beautifully by Donald Wellman in collaboration […]

Youna Kwak wins French Voices Grand Prize

Youna Kwak, the brilliant translator of Véronique Bizot‘s Gardeners, due out from Diálogos this June, has won this year’s Grand Prize in translation from the FACE (French American Cultural Exchange) Foundation in the US, for her sample translation of Daewoo by François Bon (Fayard, 2004). Look for publication from Diálogos in 2019. This will be […]

Crossing by Anna Seghers reviewed in Kirkus

Advance reviews for the Douglas Irving translation of the great Anna Seghers’s Crossing: A Love Story, are beginning to appear, first of all at Kirkus, who is also featuring the book in their Fall Preview.