Read the World October 11-17

 

We are excited to be part of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) conference, and to participate virtually through their #ReadTheWorld initiative! Alongside Veliz Books, we're offering some great discounts and book bundles! 

Purchase Veliz Books translation titles at 20% off, and hand-picked translation book bundles -- featuring selected Veliz Books and Toad Press titles -- for just $22 each at the Veliz Books store. 

You can also take advantage of Toad Press's Read The World special on our Submittable site -- any 2 chapbooks of your choice for just $10, shipping included! 

All these great deals are available for a limited time, October 11-17, 2021.

 

Faith in Strangers

 

Faith in Strangers

Katarzyna Szaulińska

translated from the Polish

by Mark Tardi

 

18 pages, paper

Toad Press, 2021. $5.00

You can purchase a copy of Faith in Strangers here.

KATARZYNA SZAULIŃSKA was born in Kołobrzeg in 1987. Her debut collection Druga Osoba [Second Person] was winner of Biuro Literackie’s first-book award and published in 2020. She has published work in respected literary journals in Poland, such as Mały Format, Helikopter, Kontent, Fabularie, Wakat, and Kultura Liberalna. English translations of her work have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, La Piccioletta Barca, and Jet Fuel Review. She is also the author of a comic book about depression entitled Czarne Fale/Murky Waves and the one-woman show Córcia [Baby girl], which was staged at the WARSaw Theatre. She lives in Warsaw, where she works as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist.


MARK TARDI is a writer, translator, and lecturer on faculty at the University of Łódź. He is the author of three books, most recently, The Circus of Trust (Dalkey Archive, 2017). Recent work and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Circumference, La Piccioletta Barca, Jet Fuel Review, Armstrong Literary, Berlin Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, and elsewhere. His translation of The Squatters’ Gift by Robert Rybicki was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2021.

• read a couple poems included in this chapbook, "i;phigenia/i;saac" and "gaseous," at Jet Fuel Review
  

 

The Cheapest France in Town

 

from The Cheapest France in Town

Seo Jung Hak

translated from the Korean

by Megan Sungyoon

 

20 pages, paper

Toad Press, 2021. $5.00

You can purchase a copy of The Cheapest France in Town here.

Seo Jung Hak was born in Seoul and graduated from Seoul Institute of the Arts’ Creative Writing program. Seo debuted in the Korean literary scene by publishing four poems including “은신처” (“Hideout”) in the Winter 1995 issue of 문학과 사회 (Literature and Society). His first book, 모험의 왕과 코코넛의 귀족들  (The King of Adventure and Aristocrats of Coconut) was published in 1998. 동네에서 제일 싼 프랑스  (The Cheapest France in Town) is his second book, published in 2017.

Megan Sungyoon translates between languages and across disciplines. Sungyoon’s efforts have appeared in Asymptote, Columbia Journal, The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), and SAND Journal, among others. As of 2020, Sungyoon lives a street away from Seoul, bordering the United States.

 

Read--and listen to--a couple poems from The Cheapest France in Town at Asymptote, where they were published earlier this year. Sungyoon writes in her translator's note, "The Cheapest encourages misreading. With its subtly unconventional uses of punctuation, plays with homonyms/homophones, and distorted subjecthood, The Cheapest is rather disinterested in identifying itself with a certain nation-state. A Korean reader may argue the poems are unmistakably Korean, but what is Korean, anyways?"

Big announcement!

We are delighted to announce that Toad Press is now an imprint of Veliz Books!

As an imprint of Veliz Books, Toad Press will be able to expand its reach and get our translations into the hands of more readers. We’ll be able to better get the word out about your Toad Press titles, and we’ll have a larger platform for promotion. 

We’ll continue making your chapbooks available for purchase on Submittable, and we’ll keep using this blog and updating our Toad Press facebook page. In addition, we now have a Toad Press tab on the Veliz Books site, and a selection of our chapbooks is available for purchase in the Veliz Books store. 

Our partnership is a win-win! It means our presses, which already have so much in common, can participate together in the literary world: at conferences, readings, and events. Together, we look forward to continuing to support exciting, literary writing and cheering on our authors and translators. 

Read more about our partnership: "Working Alone, Working Together" in periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics

 

 

Codex of the Insane

Codex of the Insane (Body and Related Matters)

Bronka Nowicka

translated from the Polish

by Katarzyna Szuster-Tardi

 

 23 pages, paper

Toad Press, 2021. $5.00 

cover image by Małgorzata ET BER Warlikowska

You can purchase a copy of Codex of the Insane here. 

BRONKA (BRONISŁAWA) NOWICKA is a Polish theatre and TV director, screenwriter, poet, and interdisciplinary artist. She is a graduate of the National Film School in Łódź, Poland, and the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts. Her literary debut, Nakarmić kamień (To Feed the Stone) was awarded the 2016 Nike Literary Award and the Złoty Środek Poezji (Golden Mean of Poetry) award. In 2017, she was a laureate of the New Voices from Europe project. Her second book, Kodeks Pomylonych (Codex of the Insane), was published in 2020, and To Feed the Stone will be published in a bilingual edition by Dalkey Archive Press in 2021.

KATARZYNA SZUSTER-TARDI is a translator. Forthcoming translations include the books To Feed the Stone by Bronka Nowicka (Dalkey Archive Press, 2021) and Polish Literature and Genocide by Arkadiusz Morawiec (Routledge, 2021). She earned her M.A. in English studies from the University of Łódź, Poland, and was a lecturer at Department of Foreign Languages, University of Nizwa in Oman. Recent translations have appeared in Denver Quarterly, LIT, Michigan Quarterly Review, Tripwire, Berlin Quarterly, and Seedings.