MQR Online

Twelve Archipelago Books lined up 6 x 2

Creating New Worlds with Language: An Interview with Emma Raddatz of Archipelago Books

In this latest installment of our Small Press Series for MQR Online, Archipelago’s editorial and development associate Emma Raddatz shares the ins and outs of working at a small press, why translations are so necessary in the American literary landscape, and recommends upcoming titles from the Archipelago catalogue.

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Carolyn Wright in her 1860 schoolhouse home in Barrington, R.I.

Documents and Trees: A Review of C. D. Wright’s Casting Deep Shade: An Amble Inscribed to Beech Trees & Co.

Perhaps it was that sense of loss that sent her out searching for different kinds of beech trees, that sent her rooting around in the old books collecting lore and the attempts at early science, that forced her to learn everything she could about these trees.

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Rows of people wearing red and white on Singapore National Day Parade

The Besieged Kingdom: A Review of Inez Tan’s This is Where I Won’t Be Alone

There is no titular story in Inez Tan’s debut collection This is Where I Won’t Be Alone. As an American reader, I first considered this title a statement of theme or artistic destination. But if you’re Singaporean, then you know the title as an excerpt from a popular 1998 song called “Home,” written by Dick Lee for the first in a series of songs Singapore’s National Day Parade, celebrated on August 9th of each year.

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A Brick House for Books: Lillian Li on Writing with the Youth of the Neutral Zone

Walking up to a large, colorful brick building with art pasted to the windows, I realized that I had always passed by the center without properly seeing it. I learned about the Neutral Zone’s youth-driven programs, including sound-mixing classes, poetry workshops, and a printing press called Red Beard, which I would come to know and love in the coming year.

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Autotheory as Rebellion: On Research, Embodiment, and Imagination in Creative Nonfiction

The clinic represented a whole lot of things I feel deeply conflicted about—the medicalization of childbirth, the immense economic privilege of mostly-white women in accessing fertility services when so many women in this country can’t even access good prenatal care—and I felt uncomfortable even being assessed.

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“A Wild and Scathing Happiness”: Philippe Petit’s On the High Wire

On the High Wire was written in 1972, when Petit was all of 23, and Paul Auster’s new translation of the book has just been published by New Directions. On the High Wire (2019) is a little (ahem, petit) thing, all of 115 pages including notes, with a trim size—4.5” x 7.3”—to match. In the hand it feels like a guidebook and reads like a dream diary. The book is both of those things.

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Resurrecting Walter Benjamin’s Archival Spirit: An Interview with Frances Cannon

“Work on good prose has three steps: a musical phase when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, & a textile one when it is woven.” These words come from the brain of 20th-century philosopher and cultural critic, Walter Benjamin. But they’ve been reimagined by Vermont-based artist and author Frances Cannon. In

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