“Amitav Ghosh’s formidable oeuvre can be described as an evolving yet unfinished fugue where notes heard earlier echo contrapuntally in later iterations.” Amit Baishya reviews this novel that “amplifies Ghosh’s turn toward the irreal and the uncanny.” worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/gh...

The 2026 Puterbaugh Festival was a celebration of Persian culture through music, dance, and poetry, featuring Rumi translator Haleh Liza Gafori. In case you missed it, we’ve got a recap for you here: worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/re...

“Jamalpour and Tabrizy pay homage to the brave women who led the WLF protests and those that have influenced their own work as Iranian women and journalists. . . .” – Persis Karim worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/su...

“If you judge a bookstore by its covers, Garcia Street Books is a festival of color, design, and placement.” Nathan Brown has been traveling Route 66 and has sent us a postcard from this historic road, now celebrating its centennial. worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/wh...

“Although the #EndSARS protest called for freedom from state violence, it failed to extend that demand to queer lives.” Sixtus Chetachi Igbokwe reviews Chibueze Darlington Anuonye’s Who Gave the Order? A History of a People’s Movement. worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/book-re...

“The word ‘leprosy’ has become divorced from the disease, slipping into a synonym for anything or anyone shunned or cast beyond the pale of society.” Our July issue features a short Q&A with Oliver Basciano, author of Utcast. @olibasciano.bsky.social worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/re...

“Beginning Middle End sustains a vital idea: storytellers who sustain and create collaborative knowledge defend themselves from and sometimes vanquish the violence and danger that necessitate flight.” – Ryan Long worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/be...

“Sometimes translation feels like solving a puzzle. It’s a chance to be in collaboration with another psyche and heart, and in this case, a particularly wise and ecstatic one.” Mina Raminsabet interviewed Rumi translator Haleh Liza Gafori. worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/fi...

“In Iran, the algorithm has not killed poetry. It has given it a second throat.” Saadi, Rumi, Farrokhzad, Isfahani: read Mina Raminsabet’s essay about how poems are returning to life on social media. worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/gh...

We need your votes! Let us know your top 3 favorite covers from our shortlist of 10 published across the past 50 years. It’s part of WLT’s centennial celebration. Read more about it and vote here: worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/news-an...

“In Keskin’s words, Earthly Conditions traces how the poetry is ‘read through associations. It is layered, layer upon layer. The reader reads the poem from whichever layer they inhabit.’” – Doğa Ayar worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/ea...

Enjoy this delightful excerpt from NYC Street Vendors: Food Trucks, Coffee Carts, Market Stalls, and More (Prestel, 2026), written by David Dodge and illustrated by Joel Holland. worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/ny...

“You don’t know it yet, but you will learn. What you are suffering from is susto, shock, soul loss.” Up on the WLT Weekly, an excerpt from Demetria Martinez’s novel-in-progress. worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/fiction...

“In Hebrew, ‘How can you’ is interchangeable with ‘How could you,’ so her question sounded like an accusation.” Read “Non-Identical Twins: Translating Myself into Hebrew,” an essay in our Puterbaugh series from our July issue. @ayelettsabari.bsky.social worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/no...

“Iconoclastic and thoroughly unimpressed with Hungary’s patriotic vehemence, Krasznahorkai has entered our national pantheon.” – Szidonia Haragos worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/ma...

“With the full-scale invasion, I decided it was important to start translating more Ukrainian literature.” Up on the WLT Weekly, Daria Knurenko interviews translator Olena Jennings. worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/intervi...

“To establish a legend, you need to string together a precise set of facts, you need to include scenes that can be painted from the age of four up.” In this story by Santiago Craig (trans. Kit Maude), the legend of a talking bear transforms a town. worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/af...

Where are our Rumi fans? How are Rumi’s poems returning to life on social media, circulating with a velocity their authors could never have imagined? How did Rumi’s use of everyday words like “raw” and “cooked” extend them? It’s all in the new issue: worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july.

“The Years of Blood belongs to a growing Nigerian poetic discourse that refuses distance from atrocity.” Chinụa Ezenwa-Ọhaeto reviews Adedayo Agarau’s “poetics that is both witness and wound.” worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/ye...

In “Raw, Cooked, Drunk: The Visionary Reach of Everyday Words in Rumi’s Poetry,” Haleh Liza Gafori shares excerpts featuring Rumi’s use of everyday words, revealing how Rumi enriched them and extended their reach. worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/ra...

“Working with weights has not only given me the strength to keep writing but also built in me the feeling, the need, for muscular music in my verse.” Miho Kinnas interviewed Jee Leong Koh, whose new collection was published today. worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/intervi...

“I’m amazed, and often taken away to places I can’t explain, by these poems. They are truly America, deep-soil, deep-heart America.” In this featured review, Luis J. Rodriguez reviews Horses, Jake Skeets’s new collection of poems. @LJRodriguez.bsky.social worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/ho...

We need your votes! Let us know your top 3 favorite covers from our shortlist of 10 published across the past 50 years. It’s part of WLT’s centennial celebration. Read more about it and vote here: worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/news-an...

We’re excited to announce the nine finalists for the 2027 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature! worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/news-an... The winner will be announced on Sept. 29.

“ . . . To preserve a human being, one needs only a lock of hair, nail parings, urine, saliva. This is God’s marionette and Galileo’s certainty. . . .” From “Hypothetical Museum,” one of three new poems by Carolyn Forché @carolynforche.bsky.social worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/th...

“Yearning, grace, benevolence, love—against the latter-day weapons of war, writers continue to wield the sword of literature. Fellow wayfarers of the word, we’d do well to follow in their footsteps.” Begin the new issue with Daniel Simon’s editor’s note. worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july/ed...

The July issue is out, featuring the special section “Iranian Literature: Persian Antecedents & Contemporary Culture,” Carolyn Forché, Santiago Craig, and many more. Check out the table of contents here and let us know what you think! worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/july

“It would be a curiously purblind reader who did not find the state of the nation as portrayed by these perceptive cultural rapporteurs to be a cause for lament, outrage, and concern.” Chris Arthur on this “lively and diverse anthology of good writing.” worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/may/bes...

Through its bold and politically charged voice, the book urges readers to recognize caste not as a vestige of the past but as a living, adaptive force shaping inequality across the world. Suparna Sinha reviews Caste: A Global Story. worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/may/cas...

“Together, the poems of Anarcadia measure up against one another’s maps and landmarks in order to provoke more fully our continued sense of the climate of harmony and disharmony, in which we disquietly live.” – Ronald Schleifer worldliteraturetoday.org/2026/may/ana...