Announcing, A New Series From Electric Literature: The Writing Life Around the World

Electric Literature is happy to announce the launch of a new series: The Writing Life Around the World. We’ve asked some of our favorite international authors to tell us about their working lives and their literary communities. How do artists in Lagos make a living? What are people reading and writing about in Dhaka? What subjects are taboo in Guatemala City? We’ll be bringing you regular dispatches from established and emerging voices, writing from home and in exile. You’ll read about everyday life, publishing, political repression, and social change. Some worlds will be familiar, others less so; all of them will be bound by a shared pursuit: writing.

Check in with us twice a month, July to December, for new work from E.C. Osondu, Dorthe Nors, Romina Paula, Can Xue, K. Anis Ahmed, Yoss, Fazilhaq Hashimi, and others. The series kicks off on July 15th with a startling, rueful essay from Eduardo Halfon:

Just after I published my first novel in Guatemala, in 2003, I had a beer with the Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya, who was living there at the time. We met at an old bar called El Establo. As soon as he saw me walk in, he raised his bottle of beer, congratulated me, smiled a crazyman’s smile, and then warned me to leave the country as soon as possible…

Eduardo Halfon, Better Not Go Saying Too Much (2015)

Join us for The Writing Life Around the World.

This series will be edited by Electric Literature’s Dwyer Murphy and supported by a grant from the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and the New York State Council on the Arts.