Distributed Presses

Alicia Borinsky will read from her new book, Frivolous Women and Other Sinners, at the Instituto Cevantes of Chicago, 31 W. Ohio St., on April 19, 2009.

Borinsky is a literary scholar, fiction writer, and poet. She has published extensively in Spanish and in English in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Frivolous Women and Other Sinners is her latest collection of poems, presented in facing-page translation.

The event takes place Sunday, April 19, at 12:00 PM. A reception will follow.

Visit the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago

Learn more about Frivolous Women and Other Sinners, published by Swan Isle

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Posted to Author Events | Swan Isle

Claudio Isaac will read from his book Midday with Buñuel and discuss Spanish and Mexican cinema at the Instituto Cevantes of Chicago, 31 W. Ohio St., on December 3, 2008.

Claudio Isaac is a filmmaker, painter, novelist, poet, and contributor to various cultural journals and television arts programming in Mexico. Midday with Buñuel recounts his friendship and admiration of legendary Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel.

The event takes place Wednesday, December 3, at 6:00 PM. A screening of the film A propósito de Buñuel and a reception will follow.

Visit the Cervantes Institute of Chicago

Learn more about Midday with Buñuel, published by Swan Isle

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Posted to Author Events | Swan Isle

Donato Ndongo, author of the recently published Shadows of Your Black Memory, was interviewed by the Columbia Missourian about his work as a novelist in exile from his native Equatorial Guinea. The interview is on the Columbia Missourian website.

Read the Columbia Missourian interview of Donato Ndongo
Learn more about Donato Ndongo's Shadows of Your Black Memory

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Posted to Publicity | Swan Isle

Donato Ndongo will read from his novel Shadows of your Black Memory and discuss African literature in Spanish at the Instituto Cevantes of Chicago, 31 W. Ohio St., on April 24, 2008.

Donato Ndongo (born 1950 in Neifang, Equatorial Guinea) is a novelist, essayist, journalist, and part of a movement of young Afro-descended authors who have contributed their African experience and traditions to Hispanic culture. Currently, Ndongo is a visiting scholar at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

The event takes place Thursday, April 24, at 6:30 PM. A reception will follow.

Visit the Cervantes Institute of Chicago

Learn more about Shadows of your Black Memory.

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Posted to Author Events | Swan Isle

Donato Ndongo's novel Shadows of your Black Memory, recently published in English translation by Swan Isle Press, received a glowing review in the March 2nd issue of The Independent:

This accomplished novel describes the love of something mercilessly elusive: a magical and transitory space floating between the past and the future, an eternal present wherein the moon is 'round and red, stained with the blood of the sun hidden behind the mountains.' Originally written in Spanish, Donato Ndongo's remarkable and strikingly original novel appears now in a subtle and elegant translation by Michael Ugarte, which does full justice to the dreamily poetic nature of the narrative.

Read the full Independent review
Learn more about Shadows of your Black Memory, published by Swan Isle

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Posted to Fiction | Reviews | Swan Isle

Donato Ndongo's novel Shadows of your Black Memory, recently published in English translation by Swan Isle Press, was reviewed by Emmanuel Harris in the most recent issue of PALARA:

Ugarte's text brilliantly captures the tone and cadence of the original novel and renders a thoughtful, compassionate narrative that readers will undoubtedly cherish. . . . Ndongo weaves an unforgettable tale that is at once Hispanic, bildungsroman and intensely and undeniably African. . . . Shadows of Your Black Memory is a work of outstanding quality and Donato Ndongo is without question an exceptional talent.

PALARA: Publication of the Afro-Latin/American Research Association

Learn more about Shadows of your Black Memory

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Posted to Fiction | Reviews | Swan Isle

Christopher Maurer, chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Boston University, and Manuel Ángel Vázquez Medel, professor of literature at the University of Seville, will hold a Round Table discussion entitled
"Lorca's Search for 'Art as a Whole'" at Instituto Cervantes on March 17th, 2008 at 6:30pm. They will discuss the Federico García Lorca that might have been and Lorca's ambition to create a new aesthetic language integrating the arts.

Both Maurer and Medel are well known Lorca scholars. Maurer has translated Swan Isle's Sebastian's Arrows: Letters and Mementos of Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca, amongst other Lorca works.

Instituto Cervantes is located at 31 W. Ohio Street in Chicago, Illinois.

03/17/2008

6:30pm
Instituto Cervantes
31 W. Ohio St.
Chicago, IL 60610

Tel: (312)335-1996

Learn More About the Event

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Posted to Author Events | Swan Isle

Michael Ugarte, translator of Shadows of your Black Memory by Donato Ndongo, was recently interviewed by Syndicate Mizzou about his research on Spanish colonialism in Africa, the literature of exile, and democracy after colonization.

Read the interview

Learn more about Shadows of your Black Memory

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Posted to Author Events | Literature | Swan Isle

Raúl Barrientos will be reading in Spanish from his bilingual work Corriendo bajo la lluvia / Running Back Through the Rain at the Cervantes Institute of Chicago, 31 W. Ohio St., Chicago, Illinois 60610 on November 29th, 2007. Professor Ben Heller, who translated Barrientos' work with Christopher Maurer, will read in English.

Barrientos, a Chilean living in the United States since the tragic events of 1973, is one of the most recognized contemporary Latin American poets. This literary event is part of the Chile Hoy! festival of Chilean culture, presented by the Consulate General of Chile and the Cervantes Institute.

The event takes place Thursday, November 29th, at 6:30pm. A reception will follow.

Visit the Cervantes Institute of Chicago

Learn more about Corriendo bajo la lluvia / Running Back Through the Rain, published by Swan Isle

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Posted to Author Events | Poetry | Swan Isle

Donato Ndongo and Michael Ugarte will be appearing at the Gaines-Oldham Black Culture Center, 813 Virginia Avenue, Columbia, Missouri on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus to celebrate the release of Ndongo's third novel El metro.

The event takes place on Wednesday, November 14th, from 3:00pm to 5:00pm (CST).

Spanish Literature and Culture Professor Benita Sampedro of Hofstra University will also give a guest lecture.

A reception will follow.

Swan Isle will be publishing Ndongo's Shadows of Your Black Memory this fall.

Visit the Gaines-Oldham Black Culture Center

Learn More about the Shadows of Your Black Memory, forthcoming from Swan Isle

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Posted to Author Events | Black Studies | Fiction | Swan Isle

Swan Isle translator and editor Christopher Maurer will be speaking at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City at 6:30pm on Monday, March 26th.

The event is part of Guggenheim's "Looking with Literature" series. Christopher Maurer will be giving readings of classical and contemporary Spanish texts in the museum's galleries and exploring the intersections of the literary and visual art worlds.

Looking with Literature: Christopher Maurer at the Guggenheim
Monday, March 26th
6:30pm
$25 ($20 members, students, and seniors)

Public Programs take place in the Peter B. Lewis Theater of the Sackler Center. For more information, call the Guggenheim Box Office at (212) 423-3587.

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Posted to Art and Architecture | Literature | Swan Isle

Lucía Charún-Illescas' Malambo was recently reviewed by Miriam DeCosta-Willis, Ph.D. in the Fall 2006 issue (No. 10) of PALARA: Publication of the Afro Latin American Research Association. Both Charún and translator Emmanuel Harris II receive praise:

This is an important novel because it is the first work of fiction by an Afro-Peruvian woman, and it is one of very few Afro-Hispanic novels that have been translated into English. . . . Smooth, fluid prose. . . . An excellent translation, which captures the rhythm and flavor of an important work of art. For although it is a fictional account of Afro-Peruvian life in colonial Peru, Malambo calls into question hegemonic assumptions about Spanish American history by underscoring the role that African-descended people played in shaping that history.

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Posted to Black Studies | Fiction | Literature | Swan Isle

Sebastian's Arrows: Letters and Mementos of Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca received glowing praise on the blog Kendall's Quest:

. . .transcendent bliss, despite the "punctured state," despite the "holes," no: because of the holes. Once again my head spins from so much evenement, from the conjunction of ironies, miracles, and large and small joys.

Christopher Maurer's masterful prologue and selection of letters, texts, and images (many generously provided by the Fundacion Gala-Salvador Dali and Fundacion Federico Garcia Lorca), offer compelling and intimate insights into the lives and work of two iconic artists. The two men had a "tragic, passionate relationship," Dali once wrote—a friendship pierced by the arrows of Saint Sebastian.

Read the Review

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Posted to Art and Architecture | Poetry | Reviews | Swan Isle

Eduardo Urios-Aparisi, author of the bilingual Las hormigas de oro / Ants of Gold, recently gave a reading at the University of Connecticut. The Daily Campus, University of Connecticut's paper, quoted Urios-Aparisi as saying, "Poetry is an art-form that must be spoken, he said, and should convey 'whatever is happening at the moment.'"

For Eduardo Urios-Aparisi poetry is above all, word, spoken word. Word that commits, pronounces, sounds. Word that leaves knots in the voice. For Urios, words play and challenge to play, to conceive the world from different and unsuspected points of view. The poems reflect the senses of the poet; moment to moment, in seduction, abandonment, and loss. It is reality flowing and always fleeing; fragmentary, accelerated, changing and unattainable.

Read the Article in The Daily Campus

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Posted to Author Events | Poetry | Swan Isle

Olivia Maciel will be giving a free reading from Sombra en plata: poemas / Shadow in Silver: Poems at the California Clipper in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood on Wednesday, July 19th. The California Clipper is located at 1002 N. California Avenue at the corner of Augusta and California. The doors will open at 8:00p.m. and the reading begins at 8:30p.m, ages 21 and over, only.

In Sombra en plata: poemas / Shadow in Silver: Poems, Mexican-born Olivia Maciel lyrically evokes another America. The richly allusive language of Sombra en plata / Shadow in Silver is a terrain at times steep, fevered, and sensual: a harmony of words scented of earth and sky. Her poems are catalysts for transformation, challenging the reader with a vision of a world where myth and the quotidian are intimately intertwined. Exploring complex and unpredictable landscapes, Maciel is both a guide and fellow traveler on a fascinating journey through memories and emotions.

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Posted to Author Events | Poetry | Swan Isle

Swan Isle Press will be participating in the 7th Annual Poetry Fest at the Chicago Public Library. Poetry Fest will be held from 10am to 4:30pm, Saturday, April 29th, at the Harold Washington Public Library, 400 South State Street in Chicago.

Learn more about the Fest

Learn more about Swan Isle Press

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Christopher Maurer, editor and translator of Sebastian's Arrows: Letters and Mementos of Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca, will be giving a slide lecture entitled "Arrows of Desire: Salvador Dali, Federico Garcia Lorca, and St. Sebastian" examining the meaning of St. Sebastian in modern painting and in the lives and works of the two artists. The event will be held Thursday, May 18th from 2:30 to 3:30 in Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. There is a fee of $13 for members and $21 for non-members.

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Posted to Art and Architecture | Author Events | Swan Isle

Olivia Maciel, author of Sombra en plata: poemas / Shadow in Silver: Poems, will be giving a reading of her work at DePauw University's Peeler Art Center Auditorium in Greencastle, Indiana, from 4:00 to 5:30pm on Tuesday, April 25th, 2006.

The richly allusive language of Sombra en plata / Shadow in Silver is a terrain at times steep, fevered, and sensual: a harmony of words scented of earth and sky. Her poems are catalysts for transformation, challenging the reader with a vision of a world where myth and the quotidian are intimately intertwined.

Learn more about the Event

Learn more about the Book

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Posted to Author Events | Poetry | Swan Isle

Olivia Maciel was interviewed on Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty-Eight on Monday, March 6. The bilingual poet discusses a variety of topics including her call to poetry, Chicago, its immigrants, and the truth of poetry.

Her poems are catalysts for transformation, challenging the reader with a vision of a world where myth and the quotidian are intimately intertwined. Exploring complex and unpredictable landscapes, Maciel is both a guide and fellow traveler on a fascinating journey through memories and emotions.

Tune in and listen as Olivia Maciel speaks of poetry's ability to "harmonize disconnected objects" and "give shape to what truly cannot be expressed in any other way" by utilizing the "language of the eternal."

Listen to the Interview

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Posted to Author Events | Poetry | Swan Isle