Literature in Translation

Shahadat is a quarterly online series designed to provide a platform for short-form writing and experimentation in writing by young and underexposed writers from the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa). The series features stories, vignettes, reflections, and chronicles in translation and the original language of Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, or Kurdish. It makes up one quarter of ArteEast’s online programming, the AE Quarterly. For past issues of Shahadat click here.

Shahadat is proud to run two alternating series, and releases four issues a year. The “Contemporary Literature in Translation” series presents contemporary authors in Works are presented in their original language and in translation. Our other series, “Exploring Popular Literature” challenges traditional understandings of “literature” emerging from the Middle East and North Africa by presenting genres of creative production that rely on words and language but which have not typically been studied as literature.

In each issue, we gather texts from a spectrum of writers to challenge the singular status of the artist/author and to encourage a more complex presentation of the Middle Eastern and North African writing for English-speaking audiences.

Contemporary Iranian Literature

 Guest Editor: Roger Sedarat

Including a rich collection of literary forms ranging from poetry to performance, this issue of Shahadat offers a rare perspective into contemporary literature emerging out of Iran. Guest Editor Roger Sedarat brings together sensitive translations by a vanguard of talented young scholars and translators like Kaveh Bassiri, Samad Alavi and Aria Fani alongside established and award-winning translators, including Sholeh Wolpé. What results is a thrilling panoramic perspective of a cross section of the field that includes Maryam Habibian and Lois Becker's translation of excerpts from Gholam-Hossein Sa'adi's play The Invitation (Da'vat) which paints an fractured portrait of pre-revolutionary Iran; Bassiri brings his own poetic expertise to translations of Roya Zarrin's verse; and Fani's collaboration with Adeeba Talukder brings us poetry by the remarkable Simin Behbahani and Bijan Jalali.


 
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