Shows
Chosen TongueHeidi Marjamäki: There is no such thing as good enoughMy guest today is Heidi Marjamäki, a Finnish author based in Berlin. She studied in Scotland, worked in Oxford and London, and now serves as Associate Fiction Editor at Okay Donkey. Heidi's stories have appeared in ergot., Crow & Cross Keys, and others. She won the 2022 Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award and a 2023 ThrillPit mentorship. We discussed writing in a second language, the influence of her Finnish heritage, and the creative freedom found in Berlin’s literary community. Heidi also spoke about translingual storytelling, her editorial work, and the value of embracing mistakes in the writing process.2025-07-1330 minChosen TongueSneha Subramanian Kanta: The Cartography of LanguageSneha Subramanian Kanta is a poet, academic, and editor born in Mumbai and based in Mississauga, Canada. She’s the author of five chapbooks and the 2025 Woodhaven Artist in Residence at the University of British Columbia. Her collection Hiraeth, an honouree for the Bronwen Wallace Award, was published by Apple Books and Penguin Random House Canada. Her work has been supported by Tin House, Granta, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and others. We discussed her journey as a bilingual poet writing in English and Hindi, the emotional weight of ancestral exile, and the cultural memory that shapes her...2025-07-0625 minChosen TongueLidija Hilje: Doubting and doing it anywayLidija Hilje is a Croatian writer and book coach. After earning a law degree, she spent a decade practicing in Croatian courts before transitioning to writing and coaching—this time in English, her second language. Her work has appeared in The New York Times and other publications. She lives in Zadar, Croatia, with her husband and two daughters. Her debut novel, Slanting Towards the Sea, will soon be published by Simon & Schuster in the US and Daunt Books in the UK. In this episode, we discussed Lidija's journey from law to literature, the shift from wri...2025-06-2937 minChosen TongueLeila Farjami: Persian is the river, English the seaLeila Farjami is an Iranian-American poet, translator, and psychotherapist based in Los Angeles. After nearly three decades of writing in Persian, she has in recent years turned her focus to poetry in English—a shift shaped by her experiences of censorship, exile, and a search for expressive freedom. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Cincinnati Review, Pleiades, Mississippi Review, The Penn Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She’s the recipient of The Cincinnati Review’s Schiff Award in poetry and has been recognized as a finalist for the Prufer Poetry Prize and the Perugia Press...2025-06-2230 minChosen TongueVesna Main: Belonging is overratedVesna Main is a Croatian-born writer who has lived in London for many years and now splits her time between the UK and rural France. Her work spans a range of forms, including the short story collection Temptation, the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted novel-in-dialogue Good Day?, the autofiction Only A Lodger… And Hardly That, and her most recent novel Waiting for A Party, which features a nonagenarian woman yearning for intimacy in prose that echoes Molly Bloom. We discussed writing in a second language, her interest in autofiction, and the themes of identity and belonging that run th...2025-06-1536 minChosen TongueBalsam Karam: The known becomes more beautiful when the foreign entersBalsam Karam is a writer and university lecturer of Kurdish heritage who has lived in Sweden since childhood. She made her literary debut in 2018 with the critically acclaimed novel Event Horizon, which was shortlisted for the Katapult Prize and won the Småland Literature Festival’s Migrant Prize. Her second novel, The Singularity—originally published in Sweden in 2021 and released in English by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2024—was shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Literature, the August Prize, and Svenska Dagbladet’s Literature Prize. We discussed her experiences as an immigrant, how she brings her mother tongues into Swedi...2025-06-0830 minChosen TongueThea Lenarduzzi: Stay Open to All the LanguagesThea Lenarduzzi is a writer, broadcaster and editor. Her debut, Dandelions, a family memoir and cultural history of migration between Italy and England, won the 2020 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize and was shortlisted for the Ackerley Prize for ‘literary autobiography of outstanding merit’. The Tower, a story about storytelling, blends history, fiction, memoir, fairy tale and folklore to explore power and its abuses (forthcoming, October 2025; preorder: bit.ly/42kdRI4). She is working on a biography of Natalia Ginzburg, Collapsing Houses: Pieces of Natalia Ginzburg. We discussed Thea's experience of living and writing between two cultures and what it means to of it, a...2025-06-0134 minChosen TongueAni Gjika: The Language of FreedomAni Gjika is an Albanian-born writer who moved to the U.S. when she was eighteen. She is the award-winning author and literary translator of eight books and chapbooks of poetry, among them Bread on Running Waters (Fenway Press, 2013), a finalist for the 2011 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and 2011 May Sarton New Hampshire Book Prize. Most recently, she is the recipient of the New Immigrant Writing Prize for her memoir, An Unruled Body, (Restless Books, 2023), which was a 2023 Foreword INDIES winner and on the 2024 Massachusetts Book Award longlist for nonfiction. Gjika is a recipient of awards and fellowships from the...2025-05-2527 minChosen TongueJulie Irigaray: The Hidden Dangers of FeedbackJulie Irigaray is a French-Basque poet based in Birmingham. Her pamphlet "Wailer, Witches and Gouches" was featured on BBC Radio 4, and her work has appeared in over 60 publications, including The Realtor, Ambit and Magma. A finalist or winner in 19 poetry competitions, most recently the 2024 Bridport Prize, she also teaches creative writing at City Lit. We discussed language, identity and belonging, the loss of Julie's cultural roots, the creative freedom of writing in English and the shifting experience of being both outsider and insider in the UK. Julie also opened up about her writing process navigating feedback and an upcoming...2025-05-1831 minChosen TongueElizabeth Torres: Every Language is a CodexElizabeth Torres, known as Madam Neverstop, is a Colombian-American poet, translator, and multimedia artist residing in Denmark. With a background in Media & Film and Fine Arts from Kean University, NJ, and an MFA in Performing Arts from Den Danske Scenekunstskole, her work spans poetic journalism, artistic installations, film, soundscapes, and visual arts. She explores themes of displacement, identity, and minority representation through various media and has authored over 20 poetry books in multiple languages, contributing to numerous anthologies worldwide. In 2022 Elizabeth was the recipient of the Ambroggio Prize by the Academy of American Poets for her book Lotería: Nocturnal S...2025-05-1132 minChosen TongueSulaiman Addonia: Writing is Not Just About Language (Bonus Episode)Sulaiman Addonia is an Eritrean-Ethiopian-British novelist. As a child, he lived in refugee camps in Sudan and Saudi Arabia. His third novel, The Seers, has been published in 2024. His first novel, The Consequences of Love, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. In 2021 he published Silence Is My Mother Tongue. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Addonia now lives in London, where he runs a creative writing school for refugees and asylum seekers. In Brussels, he founded The Asmara Addis Literary (in Exile) Festival (AALFIE), a vagabond, multilingual celebration rooted in pan-African and feminist values. It aims to...2024-11-2932 minChosen TongueRuben Quesada: Bridging Cultures through TranslationRuben Quesada is a Costa Rican-American poet and translator based in Chicago. His latest poetry collection, Brutal Companion, winner of the Barrow Street Press Editors Prize, was published in October 2024. He edited the anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry, which won an Independent Publisher Book Award in 2023. Quesada’s work appears in Seneca Review, American Poetry Review, the Best American Poetry series, Harvard Review, and The New York Times Magazine. We discussed the influence of Ruben's Costa Rican background on his poetry and the importance of storytelling and translation in bridging cultural gaps, as well as his...2024-10-2726 minChosen TongueNoémi Kiss-Déaki: English is My Allspice Noémi Kiss-Deáki is a Hungarian author living in Finland. Her début novel, Mary and The Rabbit Dream, was published by Galley Beggar Press in 2024. Noémi currently lives on the Åland Islands with her daughter. We discussed her creative process, the challenges and joys of navigating languages and cultures, and how Noémi found her writing voice in English. 2024-10-2026 minChosen TongueViviana Fiorentino: We are Collectors of Others Viviana Fiorentino is an Italian poet, novelist, and translator living in Ireland. Her poems in English appeared in anthologies (Dedalus Press, Salmon Poetry, and Arlen House), magazines (Banshee, The Stinging Fly, Southword, The London Magazine) , on public transports in Dublin (Poetry in Motion, Poetry Ireland), on air for RTÉ 1, in the The Irish Poetry Reading Archive. She translated into Italian the Irish poets Freda Laughton (Arcipelago Itaca, 2022), Doireann Ní Ghríofa (VersoDove, rivista di Letteratura, n. 23, 2024), Paula Meehan (Il Pietrisco, 2023) and Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier (Verodove, rivista di Letteratura, n. 22, 2023). She published an essay on Anne Car...2024-10-1330 minChosen TongueYael van der Wouden: English Gave Me Control over My ExperiencesYael van der Wouden is a writer and teacher of creative writing and comparative literature in the Netherlands. Her debut novel, The Safekeep, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024 and has been translated into over fourteen languages. Her essay on Dutch identity and Jewishness, "On (Not) Reading Anne Frank", has received a notable mention in The Best American Essays 2018. We discussed the role of displacement and otherness in Yael's work and how English gave her a sense of control over her experiences. Yael also reflected on the challenges of writing in multiple languages and the d...2024-10-0637 minChosen TonguePegah Ouji: Glimpsing the Chosen Tongue through a KeyholePegah Ouji is an Iranian American writer who writes in Farsi and English. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Joyland, Epiphany, Fugue, Split Lip among others. She has been a scholarship recipient from Kundiman, Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute, Hudson Valley Writer’s Center, Literary Arts, Grub Street, and Shipman Agency. She was a 2024 Emerging Writer Fellow at Smokelong Quarterly. She is currently an editorial fellow at Roots, Wounds, Words where she is working on an anthology of creative work by BIPOC justice-involved and impacted artists. We discussed the challenges Pegah encountered as an outsider in America, as we...2024-09-2932 minChosen TongueSumitra Singam: Learning and Translating Trauma as a Language Sumitra Singam is a Malaysian-Indian-Australian writer and psychiatrist living in Melbourne. Her work has been published widely, nominated for a number of Best Of anthologies, and was selected on Best Microfictions 2024. She works in mental health. We discussed how Sumitra incorporates words from different languages into her stories and the impact of her Malay literary tradition on her writing style. Sumitra also explores the connection between trauma and language, highlighting the power of putting traumatic experiences into words and emphasizing the importance of language in shaping our understanding of ourselves and our experiences. 2024-09-2233 minChosen TongueAleksandar Hemon: When a Mother Tongue Stops Being EnoughAleksandar Hemon is the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, as well as The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, Love and Obstacles, The Book of My Lives, The Making of Zombie Wars, as well as a couple of non-fiction books. His most recent novel is The World and All That It Holds (2023) Aleksandar Hemon has worked as a writer for Radio Sarajevo Youth Program, and then as a waiter, canvasser, bookseller, bike messenger, as well as a supervisor at a literacy center, and a teache...2024-09-1535 minChosen TongueMiriam Calleja: The Imposter Syndrome and the Dangers of Translating Velvet into PlasticMiriam Calleja is an award-winning Maltese bilingual freelance poet, nonfiction/fiction writer, workshop leader, and translator. She is the author of three poetry collections, two chapbooks, and several collaborative works. Her poetry has been published in anthologies and in translation worldwide. She has recently been Highly Commended for a translated poem by the Stephen Spender Trust. Her latest chapbook is titled Come Closer, I Don’t Mind the Silence (BottleCap Press, 2023). Her essays and poems have appeared in Platform Review, Odyssey, Taos Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Modern Poetry in Translation, humana obscura, and elsewhere. Miriam lives in Birmingham, Alabama. We discu...2024-09-0832 minChosen TongueGrace Loh Prasad: I Don't Have Instructions for the Language I've Lost Grace Loh Prasad is the author of The Translator's Daughter (Mad Creeks Books/Ohio University Press 2024), a debut memoir about living between languages, navigating gloss and the search for belonging. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Literary hub, Longreads, Guernica, Brevity, The Offing, Oldster Magazine, and elsewhere. A member of the Writers Grotto and the AAPI Writers' Collective Seventeen Syllables, Prasad lives in the Bay Area. We discussed Grace's experience of living Taiwan as a young child and losing a mother tongue. She also reflected on the challenges of navigating between languages and cultures and the search...2024-09-0132 minChosen TongueLeila Aboulela: My Story Can only Be Told in EnglishLeila Aboulela is the first-ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. Nominated three times for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction), she is the author of numerous novels, including Bird Summons, The Kindness of Enemies, The Translator, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Minaret and Lyrics Alley, which was Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Her collection of short stories Elsewhere, Home won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year. Leila’s work has been translated into fifteen languages, and her plays The Insider, The Mystic Life and others were broadcast...2024-08-2530 minChosen TongueLucy Tan: Give Yourself Permission to Tell Your Stories Lucy Tan is the author of the novel What We Were Promised, which was a Barnes & Nobles Discover Pick, a Washington Post Best Book of 2018, and longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is a recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Originally from New Jersey, Lucy lives and writes in Seattle. You can read about Lucy's experience of rediscovering Chinese while at college here. 2024-08-1824 minChosen TongueHisham Matar: Literature as a Translation of HumanityHisham Matar was born in New York City to Libyan parents. He spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo and has lived most of his life in London. He is the author of the novels In the Country of Men, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Anatomy of a Disappearance. His two memoirs are: The Return, which was the recipient of a 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Award, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, France’s Prix du Livre Etranger Inter & Le Journal du Dimanche and Germany's Geschwister Scholl Prize, and A Mont...2024-08-1138 minChosen TongueJesse Lee Kercheval: Spanish brought poetry alive for me again Jesse Lee Kercheval is an award-winning artist, writer, poet, and translator. Her most recent books include the poetry collections, I want to tell you, and Un Pez Dorado no te sirve para nada. Selected poems translated by Ezequiel Zaindenwerg and published in Uruguay by editorial Yaugarù, which also published Jesse's collection of Spanish language poetry, Extranjera/Stranger. Jesse's other books include America that island off the Coast of France, The Alice Stories, and the memoir Space, all of which won important awards. Jess's translations include poems by Idea Vilariño and Circe Maia. Jess is the Zona Gale Professor Emerita of...2024-03-2430 minChosen TongueJenny Liao: Losing a Mother Tongue Jenny Liao is a Chinese -American writer born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of two children's books, Everyone Loves Lunchtime but Zia and Everyone Loves Career Day but Zia. Jenny's writing has been featured in The New Yorker and Bon Appetit. Jenny currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two Calico cats, Donald and Bigné, and you can find her on Instagram and Twitter, @jaleao, or on her website, jaleao.com. We discussed how Jenny's been working to regain fluency in her mother tongue, Cantonese, through classes and practicing with a mother, how ch...2024-03-1728 minChosen TongueAvra Margariti: The Freedom of a Non-Gendered Language Avra Margariti is a queer author, Greek sea monster and Rhysling-nominated poet with the fondness for the dark and the darling. Avra's work haunts publications such as Strange Horizons, The Deadlands, F &SF, Podcastle, Asimov's, Vastarien and Reckoning. You can find Avra on Twitter @AvraMargariti. Together we discussed Avra's early publishing experience and the inspiration she found in Greek authors writing in English. Avra also expressed her concern about the retelling of Greek mythology in Anglo -Saxon literature and the commodification of Greek myths for branding purposes. Finally, Avra highlighted the importance of preserving the Greek vibe and folklore in w...2024-03-1027 minChosen TongueAlina Stefanescu: The Child in Me is Always RomanianAlina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama. Alina is the author of several publications, including a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina's poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She serves as poetry editor for several journals, reviewer and critic for others, and Co-Director of PEN America's Birmingham Chapter...2024-03-0329 minChosen TongueAna Maria Caballero: Languages as different bone structuresAna Maria Caballero is a Colombian-American literary artist whose work explores how biology delimits societal and cultural rites, ripping the veil off romanticized motherhood and questioning notions that package sacrifice as a virtue. She's the recipient of the Beverly International Prize, Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize, the Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize, a Future Arts Writer Award, a Sevens Foundation Grant and has been a finalist for numerous other literary and arts prizes. We discussed how her themes and writing style have evolved with each language, the growing presence of digital and crypto poetry, and her use...2024-02-2523 minChosen TongueAlison Mooney - Choosing Tongues to Understand PeopleAlison Mooney is a poet, storyteller and dancer who has lived in France, the US, Ireland, Germany, and now lives in Brussels. For many years she worked across Europe in the private sector, before joining the European Parliament 10 years ago. In 2020, Alison won the Cicero Speechwriting Award, from the US Professional Speechwriters Association, for a poetic motivational speech. In 2022, she was appointed speechwriter to the President of the European Parliament. In 2023, Alison self-published a collection of multilingual poetry: Balance – in mind, in body, in soul. The first edition was sold out within weeks and Alison has been giving poetry rea...2024-02-1828 minChosen TongueMordecai Martin: Reclaim your chosen tongues! Mordecai Martin is an Ashkenazi Jewish writer, a Bisexual Psychiatric Survivor, an aspiring translator of Yiddish and Spanish, and a fifth generation New Yorker. He lives in Washington Heights, Manhattan with his wife, son, and cat. He is an MFA candidate at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA. In his non-fiction he writes to explore family, history, place, and mental illness. In his fiction, he strives to chronicle and capture the peculiarities of voice, the miraculous nature of event, and the depths and edges of Jewish humanity. Using his translation skills, he hopes to create hybridized texts that make personal es...2024-02-1132 minChosen TongueVictoria Buitron: A Body (and Mind) across Two Hemispheres Victoria Buitron is an award-winning writer who hails from Ecuador and resides in Connecticut. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. Her debut memoir-in-essays, A Body Across Two Hemispheres, was the 2021 Fairfield Book Prize winner. A VONA fellow, her work has been selected for 2022’s Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf’s Top 50. In 2023, she received the Artistic Excellence Award from the Connecticut Office of the Arts. She is currently the Competitions Editor for Harbor Review. She had the joy and privilege of selecting the nonfiction, fiction, and poetry for the 2023 Connecticut Literary Anthology and will be returning in 202...2024-02-0431 minChosen TonguePim Wangtechawat: Owning one's multiculturalism Pim Wangtechawat is a Thai-Chinese writer from Bangkok, Thailand. She graduated with Distinction from Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland with a Masters in Creative Writing. Her debut novel, The Moon Represents My Heart, was published by OneWorld Publications in the UK in June 2023. Television rights sold after a competitive auction to 21 Laps and Netflix, with actress Gemma Chan set to star and produce. We discussed how Pim started writing in English, the doubts she faced in the beginning, and how today she advises young writers to own their multiculturalism and just tell their stories without being afraid. 2024-01-2828 minChosen TongueAndrea Jurjević: English as Freedom Andrea Jurjević is a Croatian poet, writer, and literary translator living in the US. She is the author of two poetry collections and a chapbook: In Another Country, winner of the 2022 Saturnalia Books Prize; Small Crimes, winner of the 2015 Philip Levine Prize; and Nightcall, which was the 2021 ACME Poem Company Surrealist Series selection. Andrea’s book-length translations from Croatian include Olja Savičević’s Mamasafari (Diálogos Press, 2018) and Marko Pogačar’s Dead Letter Office (The Word Works, 2020), which was shortlisted for the 2021 National Translation Award in Poetry. You can read Only River is Fluent here: https://www.thenormals...2024-01-2127 minChosen TongueMathieu Cailler: a Frenchman in America, an American in FranceMathieu Cailler is the author of seven books: one novel, two short story collections, two volumes of poetry, and two children’s titles. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in over one hundred publications, including The Saturday Evening Post and the Los Angeles Times. He is the recipient of numerous awards, most notably the Shakespeare Award, the Short Story America Prize, the New England Book Festival Award, the Los Angeles Book Festival Prize, and the Paris Book Festival Prize. We discussed how he decided to write children's books in Spanish, what makes him feel like a Frenchma...2023-11-2629 minChosen TongueMileva Anastasiadou: Living in Greek, Writing in EnglishMileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist from Athens, Greece, and the author of We Fade with Time, a flash fiction collection published in 2022 by Alien Buddha Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and Best Small Fiction nominated writer, Mileva's work can be found in many journals, such as The Chestnut Review, New World Writing, Milk Candy Review, The Bureau Dispatch, and others. We discussed how Mileva's Greek publisher encouraged her to switch languages, how hard writing in English felt in the beginning, but also how it turned out to be a unique way she could look at...2023-11-1925 minChosen TongueFrancesco Dimitri: Translating the soul into EnglishFrancesco Dimitri is the author of four books in English and several more in his native Italian. Originally from the Southern region of Puglia, Francesco moved to London at 27 without speaking a word of English and a decade later he published his first book in his adoptive tongue, To Read Aloud. Three more followed and his latest novel, The Dark Side of the Sky, will be published next Spring. We discussed what prompted him to change his life and his writing language, how he learnt to translate his soul into English, and how his native Puglia remains in...2023-11-1225 minChosen TongueMelissa Llanes Brownlee: English as a colonising languageMelissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in The Rumpus, Fractured Lit, Flash Frog, Gigantic Sequins, Cream City Review, Cincinnati Review miCRo, Indiana Review, Craft, swamp pink, Pinch and Moon City Review, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. Read Hard Skin from Juventud Press and Kahi and Lua from Alien Buddha. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story melissallanesbrownlee.com. We discussed the progressive disappearance of Hawaiian as a consequence of colonization, the role played by pidgin in Hawaiian society, how it is...2023-11-0528 minChosen TongueAndré Aciman: Chiselling the Foreignness Away Andre Aciman is an Italian-American writer, born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt. He currently is a distinguished professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he teaches the history of literary theory and the works of Marcel Proust. Andre is the author of a memoir, Out of Egypt, and several novels, including Call Me by Your Name, whose film adaptation, written by James Ivory, won an Oscar in 2018 alongside a very long list of other awards. We discussed his cosmopolitan upbringing, the fact that there isn’t a place he truly calls home, and how his French and Italian roots have sh...2023-10-2929 minChosen TongueNabeela Ahmed: The Importance of Writing Authentically in a Second LanguageNabeela Ahmed is a writer, multilingual poet, spoken word artist and storyteller. She writes and shares her work in English, Urdu and Pahari. Her poetry was the main feature of Keighley Arts and Film Festival in 2020. She teaches creative writing and poetry workshops. She has had poems published in England, America, Pakistan and India.Her poetry manuscript was shortlisted by Verve Poetry Press in 2022. Her novella, Despite our Differences is available on Amazon. We spoke about what goes amiss while switching from one language to the other, what's there to be gained, what it means for multicultural children to be ab...2023-10-2231 minChosen TongueElvis Bego: English as a Safe Haven Elvis Bego was born in Bosnia, fled the war there at age twelve and now lives in Copenhagen. His work can be found in Agni, Best American Essays 2020, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Threepenny Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. He is at work on a novel. In this episode, we discuss the dramatic events that led him to leave his homeland, his decision to embrace English over the many languages he's fluent in, the inspiration he draws from Isak Dinesen aka Karen Blixen, and the intriguing way his writing style evolves according to the language he's working in. At the end o...2023-10-1526 minChosen TongueRajia Hassib: The Emotional Impact of Switching TonguesRajia Hassib is the Egyptian-American author of two widely reviewed novels: In the Language of Miracles and A Pure Heart . She moved to the U.S. when she was 23 and a few years later, she started writing fiction in English. In a beautiful article written for LitHub a few months ago, Rajia reflected on what switching tongues meant for her and for her creativity, and how it gave her more artistic freedom. In this episode of Chosen Tongue, we chatted about the emotional impact of choosing English to share her point of view and her story as a...2023-10-0826 min
Short Story TodayEpisode #65 - Eleonora Balsano: "The Best Vintages Have a Distinctive Character" and "The Movie Star's Daughter Has an Itchy Back"Italian author Eleonora Balsano (who now resides in Brussels) can speak and write in multiple languages - but she feels most at home writing in English. While it's not her mother tongue, it's a language she's come to believe affords her more freedom as a writer. Her interest in the experiences of writers who share this belief has compelled her create a podcast called "Chosen Tongue." We read two of her flash stories: "The Movie Star's Daughter Has an Itchy Back" and "The Best Vintages Have a Distinctive Character." https://www.eleonorabalsano.net/Support the show2023-10-0455 minChosen TongueTrailer2023-10-0301 min
MicroManzella x Balsano x NandwaniAbby Manzella is the author of Migrating Fictions: Gender, Race, and Citizenship in U.S. Internal Displacements. Eleonora Balsano is a journalist and writer in Brussels, EU. Sarosh Nandwani works as an engineer, reads for the Longleaf Review, writes poetry and creative non-fiction, and loves experimenting with her curly hair. (Transcript) Welcome to Micro, a podcastContinue reading "Manzella x Balsano x Nandwani"2022-07-0510 min
MicroManzella x Balsano x NandwaniAbby Manzella is the author of Migrating Fictions: Gender, Race, and Citizenship in U.S. Internal Displacements. Eleonora Balsano is a journalist and writer in Brussels, EU. Sarosh Nandwani works as an engineer, reads for the Longleaf Review, writes poetry and creative non-fiction, and loves experimenting with her curly hair. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices2022-07-0511 min