"The Secret Life of Writers," the summer issue of The Literary Review (TLR), features essays by 22 writers from around the world, including Norway, France, Italy, Slovenia, Denmark and the United States. Their subjects range from the ironies of combining careers with literary creativity to the complexities of love and marriage, the sufferings of alcoholism and sexual abuse and the struggles of existing as a writer in alien and hostile societies.

For example, Megan Sexton, a poet and literary magazine editor, also performs as a drummer in a rock group. Poet and novelist Bino Realuyo illustrates his anecdotes of working days in a cubicle with a series of cartoons. Attorney Janet McDonald, now living in Paris, reveals her former firm's troubled reaction to the publication of her memoir, Project Girl.

Poet Rigoberto González writes of a childhood in migrant worker poverty, novelist Duff Brenna of his mother's Alzheimer's disease, story writer and novelist Lauren B. Davis of her confrontation with drinking and writer Richard Hoffman of childhood sexual abuse.

The loves and marriages of writers are addressed in an interview with Richard and Charlee Wilbur by Jeffrey Cramer, Minna Proctor's translation of the letters of Sibilla Aleramo and Dino Campana, Linda Lappin's rendering of the tortured life of Modligliani's wife — Jeanne Hèbuterne, and Thomas Kennedy's commentary on the relationship of Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen.

From a broader political perspective, Susan Schwartz Senstad tells what she learned about the sufferings of Bosnia when writing her acclaimed novel, Music for the Third Ear. Ales Debeljak writes about his own conflicts as a poet and intellectual during the years of turmoil in the Balkans. Adam Sorkin, a well-known translator of Romanian poetry, reports on the oppression of poets in the country under the Ceausescu dictatorship.

The issue's guest editors were Walter Cummins, TLR's editor emeritus, and Thomas Kennedy, a TLR advisory editor.

Spring Issue

The spring issue of TLR, an homage to the art of translation, included poems by Geoffrey O'Brien and Robert Polito, a new essay from Mario Vargas Llosa's forthcoming book and Walter Cummins' essay on translating jazz into poetry, "Bird in Words."

The spring issue, " … In Translation," includes translations from nine languages, but the editors also wanted it to address translation in the broader sense. Among the many pieces published here are a story by Lynne Tillman about the translation of cop speak, Jeffrey Allen translating a Pasolini film into poetry and Erica Baum's stunning visual translations of words into photographs. This was the first issue of The Literary Review with René Steinke, English (Flor), serving as editor-in-chief.

The spring issue was complimented in two major periodicals, The Times Literary Supplement, published in England, and Politiken, a major Danish newspaper.

Donation of Issues

Eleven boxes of back issues of The Literary Review were delivered to Thelma Tate in the Alexander Library at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. Tate is coordinator of global outreach services for the Rutgers University libraries in New Brunswick. According to a Gannett New Jersey article, "In recent years, Tate has guided efforts by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions to devise mobile collections for far-flung locales where libraries don't exist and even schools lack books." In such a role, she has traveled to Kenya and Zimbabwe to deliver books and journals.

Her organization is presently dealing with Gambia, Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria; she has had requests for literature from Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and China. So far, the service has provided Kenya with 17,000 volumes of literature to help start 12 schools. In March, 2002, it delivered 80,000 volumes overall.

In the journal's efforts to aid Tate in her endeavors, 500 copies of back issues of TLR, which included writing from Vietnam, the Philippines, Wales, Portugal and Australia, were donated. In addition, one mixed box, approximately 40 titles, of FDU Press books were donated.

Tate will receive 20 or 25 copies of each new issue of The Literary Review through a complimentary subscription.
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September
2002

View text only for this complete issue.

Flor =
College at Florham, Madison, N.J.

Metro =
Metropolitan Campus for Professional and International Studies, Teaneck, N.J.

Information Deadlines

Deadline dates for information for the remaining issues of Inside FDU on the Web this semester are
October issue — September 24
November issue — October 22
December issue — November 19

Copy received after these days will be included in the following issue. Every effort will be made to deal with late-breaking stories. Send information to: Carol Black, Publications, at H-DH3-14, fax to 201-692-7039 or e-mail to black@fdu.edu.

Inside FDU is published by the Office of Communications and Marketing. Newsletter Staff: Carol Black, editor; Mary Ann Bautista, Angelo Carfagna, Howard Gilman, Joan Harvey, Gretchen Johnson, William Kennedy, Lillian Lukac, Rebecca Maxon, Art Petrosemolo, Eric Range.

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