"To Forget Venice" is the improbable challenge and the title of Peg Boyers's newest collection of poems. The site of several unforgettable years of her adolescence, the place she has returned to more frequently than any other, the city of Venice is b...

A splash of sea foam. A sly sparrow. A man dodging the rain. From such mundane, unexpected moments, Spanish poet Claudio Rodriguez crafted his 1965 "Alliance and Condemnation", a collection of poems that temper the joy of existence – the "bounty that...

Using the classic short story form with surprise endings to great effect, Urmila Pawar brings to life strong and clever women from all classes of society: heroines who are brave in the face of caste oppression, strong in opposing their in-laws, defia...

Marjorie Perloff writes in her preface to "Poetics in a New Key" that when she learned David Jonathan Y. Bayot wanted to publish a collection of her interviews and essays, she was "at once honored and mystified".  But to Perloff's surprise and her re...

"Nowhere / on these parchment leaves do I find / myself, my likeness, my name, / not a whisper – Cynthia – not one / breath of me". For thirty years poet Jana Harris researched the diaries and letters of North American pioneer women. While the nam...

In "Suki", Suniti Namjoshi weaves a witty and delightful tapestry from threads of longing, loss, memory, metaphor, and contemplation. Taken as a whole, the picture she draws is a stunning evocation of the love and friendship shared between herself an...

On a rainy afternoon in Cherrapunji, the postman arrives with a letter for fourteen-year-old Saphira, and her life will never be the same. Dalinia, meanwhile, seems to have the perfect life: successful husband, cute children, a beautiful home. But he...

"Since it is the case that you are now just beginning that journey that I have for the most part as you see completed, that is, the one through mortal life, and loving you so very much as I do, I have proposed to myself – as one who has been many pla...

The powerful short stories in this collection are set against – and frequently driven by – the picturesque yet often violent backdrop of Assam, a province in India's northeast. In one, a young man attempts to escape the confines of middle-class aspir...

In her detailed readings of a wide range of Indian writers – including Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Anita Nair, Jhumpa Lahiri and many others – Geetanjali Singh Chanda focuses on domestic spaces in women's fiction. The house is not merely a backdro...