Talking Back to Nabokov: An Interview with Akhil Sharma

Born in Delhi, India, in 1971, Akhil Sharma immigrated to the U.S. when he was 8.  He is the author of one novel, An Obedient Father, for which he won a PEN/Hemingway Award and a Whiting …

Photo of the Week: Monastery in Brentwood

While I was working on my article on the Burmese community in Pittsburgh for our upcoming special issue on Burma, I had the opportunity to spend a Saturday at a Burmese monastery.

Lighthead: Poems by Terrance Hayes

In his fourth collection, Terrance Hayes investigates how we construct experience. With one foot firmly grounded in the everyday and the other hovering in the air, his poems braid dream and reality into a poetry that …

A Flawed Election Day

In 1990, a parliamentary government was fairly elected by the Burmese people with Aung San Suu Kyi at its head. Burma’s military junta ignored the election and placed Suu Kyi under house arrest. Since then, the military and its generals have ruled Burma with little regard for the freedoms its people deserve.

This flawed election day will be the first held in Burma in the last 20 years, but under the nation’s constitution and electoral laws there seems to be little hope for change.

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.

Map of a Shooting Gallery: Protestors of March 1988

In explaining the horrors he experienced in Burma, words are not always enough for Than What. He witness the violence of the 8888 Uprising during which Burmese officials gunned down students who had gathered to protest the economic policies of the government. After witnessing the death of friends and classmates, Than What made fifty photocopies of a publication telling the history of the student protest movement and help distribute the unofficial newspaper. In 2002, he was forced to flee Burma because of his political involvement and currently lives in Pittsburgh.

The Stateless Rohingyas: An Interview with John Carlin

Journalist John Carlin has heard stories of poverty, injustice, and hope from people in countries such as El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, and South Africa. However, it is the story of the Rohingyas of Burma that he finds the most tragic. In this interview he explains why.

“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 …

The Double-Edged Sword of the Internet

The story of Than What, a Burmese citizen escaping military persecution, is the beginning of a series covering the narratives of free expression in Burma.

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 …