Immigration and Oppression: Readings with Amnesty International and American Shorts

City of Asylum/Pittsburgh writer-in-residence Khet Mar will be reading on Tuesday at the Shadow Lounge at an event sponsored by COA/P, Pittsburgh Human Rights Network, and Amnesty International.

She will speak on the deplorable state of human rights in Burma and the repression of journalists. After the reading Khet Mar will take questions from the audience and there will be a film screening and an opportunity to participate in an Amnesty International letter writing campaign.

“My life has become a living death”: An Interview with the Poet Khin Lunn

Translated by George Myo Zaw Mya Khin Lunn, photo courtesy of the author. In 1996, poet Khin Lun and a group of Burmese writers collaborated with activists in Thailand to publish a newsletter critical of the …

Aunt Resía and the Spirits: Stories by Yanick Lahens

Translated by Betty Wilson The Haiti of Yanick Lahens‘ path-breaking short fiction is a country demanding our compassion as it reveals to us its horrors. Through her elliptical and sharp style she succeeds in conveying the …

The World in an Alley: The Music of Poetry

Sampsonia Way —a narrow alley on the North Side of Pittsburgh—has become a bustling avenue traversed by writers from all over the world. Croatia, Cuba, Macedonia—just to mention a few—have been represented here.

Noose and Hook: Poems by Toi Derricotte

Award-winning poet Lynn Emanuel describes her new collection, Noose and Hook, as one that “summons America before the bench.” In this book, Emanuel explores America’s wars, food, poetry, painting, death—and oh yes, dogs—with her unique brand …

Greetings from Sampsonia Way!

We are all excited about this issue of Sampsonia Way magazine. With over 30 pages of original content it is our biggest issue yet. We present an overview of Haitian literature, have a conversation with poets Terrance …

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

Told from eight different points of view, Christos Tsiolkas‘ The Slap begins at a barbecue in a Melbourne suburb when a man loses his temper and smack a child. The parents take the man to court. …

Purge by Sofi Oksanen

Soon to be published in twenty-five languages, Sofi Oksanen’s award-winning novel Purge is a suspenseful tale of two women dogged by their own shameful pasts and the dark, unspoken history that binds them. When Aliide Truu, …

Joe Speedboat by Tommy Wieringa

In Joe Speedboat the inhabitants of a sleepy rural town are shaken awake by the arrival of a kinetic young visionary—the eponymous Joe. After a violent farming accident plunges him into a coma for six months, young Frankie Hermans …

Farang: A Travelogue In Poems

A travelogue in poems, Peter Blair‘s third collection limns the complexities and contradictions of being an American living abroad. The speaker of these poems is at once immersed in the life of a Thai city, while …