ALSO TODAY: @kolatubosun.bsky.social on the role of African forests in storytelling. “African novels have set revelatory scenes, important plot events and sometimes whole stories in the forest.” flaminghydra.com/african-fore...
Flaming Hydra @flaminghydra.com is a cooperative of writers and artists publishing what interests them freely.
One or two big stories each weekday, features, criticism, interviews, comics, you name it. A weekly Hydranym game. Our new News On Fire column.
Partial list of our contributors:
Excited to share that my translation of Wong Yi's 黃怡 "Overseas Bride" has been selected for BEST LITERARY TRANSLATIONS 2026. This is a timely story about the losses involved in immigration, esp. language, & is a love letter to Cantonese. Congrats to all the translators & thank you to the editors!
A book with a purple cover displayed on the background of mossy bricks Best Literary Translations 2026 U.S. Poet Laureate ARTHUR SZE Guest Editor Noh Anothai Wendy Call Oyku Tekten Kola Tubosun Series Co-editors
![A spread from the book displayed on the background of mossy bricks
[Out in the street the air smells of smoke]
Olga Bragina
Translated from the Russian by Olga Zilberbourg](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:arqwufxfd2v3sqp5k2ag5cu5/bafkreicok37lgzt3haxbavk4bpvjouraoz3rhsgct7jjla6gfwpwtheq24@jpeg)
A spread from the book displayed on the background of mossy bricks [Out in the street the air smells of smoke] Olga Bragina Translated from the Russian by Olga Zilberbourg
This anthology is now available for pre-order from @deepvellum.bsky.social. Huge thanks to the editors and the publishers of literature in translation for your support! I'm thrilled that this poem by Olga Bragina will now have even more reach. Please buy the book & ask your library to carry it!
You can now pre-order BLT 2026 via @deepvellum.bsky.social
Cover of BEST LITERARY TRANSLATIONS 2026, guest-edited by U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze.
An interior page of BEST LITERARY TRANSLATIONS 2026, featuring the opening sentence of "The Fish Market" by Esther Karin Mngodo, translated from the Swahili by Jay Boss Rubin, and originally published in THE COMMON. "The smell of fish at the ferry landing is so different from how they smell at home, stored away in the freezer, you tell your driver Ibrahimu as the two of you walk toward the fish market."
Honored to be included in BEST LITERARY TRANSLATIONS 2026, guest-edited by U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, to be published by @deepvellum.bsky.social on 4/14. Thanks to @koimolove.bsky.social for writing the beautiful story; thanks to @commonmag.bsky.social for publishing it and nominating it to BLT.
As a documentarian, I am trained to look for the narrative arc in the chaos, but as a father the lens is much narrower, and far more fragile. My teenage son is old enough now to read the tension in the headlines and in the faces of his friends, while my three-year-old is at an age where the safety provided by his parents is still an unspoken assumption. As I walk through the tranquil squares of Sharjah I am haunted by the knowledge that the quiet streets back home have been transformed, and are now filled with a different kind of reality. It is one thing to witness the rhymes of history in the contemplative space of a library or on a film set; it is quite another to realize that the bad dream of my Nigerian youth is now the backdrop of my children’s formative years, a place where no lease agreement or residency permit can truly protect anyone from a government determined to make an enemy of its own people.
Nigerian-born scholar, translator and documentarian @kolatubosun.bsky.social moved to Minneapolis with his family in 2022, little imagining the kind of U.S.A. he would be bringing his children into.
Rich, sobering essay about how the world is changing under our feet.
flaminghydra.com/issue-485/
ALSO TODAY: @kolatubosun.bsky.social sits at a literary festival thousands of miles away and thinks of Minneapolis. "Every time I have tried to write about what is going on in America today, it overwhelms me in a way that prevents a true emotional reckoning." flaminghydra.com/recurring-ni...
We are excited to open applications for a UK-based Translator in Residence working with/in Endangered Languages.
Find full details, including fee and residency requirements, below.
Application deadline: 15 February, 2026
buff.ly/yibsATf
SFAL 2026 to host Africa’s top literary voices in Sharjah www.wam.ae/a/by2pvnk
Call for Submissions: Best Literary Translations 2027 (to be guest-edited by Emily Wilson.
Deadline: January 9, 2026.
Please share.
www.deepvellum.org/news/blt2027...
Your library should have one of these...
See: ebrohimie.olongoafrica.com/license
Your library should have one of these...
See: ebrohimie.olongoafrica.com/license
What we've been up to for a bit: olongoafrica.com/about/
The genocide in Gaza is *still* ongoing.
40. Journalism seed line from “Driving with Ron” Klá Túbsún, in Edwardsville by Heart (Wisdom’s Bottom Press, 2018) dear diary, the ink is never dry, and I can never close your pages; they are open to the winds, to sun and moon and stars, so I no longer need to write. line by line in nested twigs and setted soil, in clouds and coal and snow and oil, the world records its goings on, our goings on, and soon, perhaps, our going.
40. "Journalism".
from "Hard Graft on the Half Shell", a sequence of poems grown around one-line grafts taken from other poets' poems.
#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetsofbluesky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #hardgraft
@kolatubosun.bsky.social
“BLT has arisen out of a tangible public demand for inclusive and transparent cultural conversations... offers some of the best of global literature in English-language translation, presenting an opportunity to expand the audience for world literature.”
worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/news-an...
Coded Language: African Literature in Translation after Ngugi www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCF0...
Ten years before Nigeria’s civil war, an expat academic waved the flag for African writing by launching the Black Orpheus journal. From 1957 to 1967, Ulli Beier united a clamour of voices in different tongues, bound beneath strikingly graphic covers.
www.worldofinteriors.com/story/black-...
"A roundtable on translation, community, and the work that connects us, with the editors of the Best Literary Translations 2025."
bombmagazine.org/articles/202...
Ten years before Nigeria’s civil war, an expat academic waved the flag for African writing by launching the Black Orpheus journal. From 1957 to 1967, Ulli Beier united a clamour of voices in different tongues, bound beneath strikingly graphic covers.
www.worldofinteriors.com/story/black-...
TODAY: @kolatubosun.bsky.social on the exquisite artistry of Benin and the opening of a new West African art museum, which was "scuttled by protesters connected to the Ọba of Benin, who stormed the museum, insulting attendees and demanding that they leave." flaminghydra.com/issue-443/#b...
History reaches into the present day as the treasures of Benin fall into limbo, with warring museums, Nigerian royals, and state actors all pressing their own claims.
Riveting tale beautifully told from @kolatubosun.bsky.social
flaminghydra.com/issue-443/
Religion, money, regional divisions, and volatile politics have produced a combustible situation in Nigeria—one that could turn into a roaring fire if the U.S. chooses to intervene, Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún writes.
Inbox— next cover of the New Yorker: “Mayor Mamdani,” by Edel Rodriguez
"A roundtable on translation, community, and the work that connects us, with the editors of the Best Literary Translations 2025."
bombmagazine.org/articles/202...
A U.S. military intervention would be a disaster in an already divided country. foreignpolicy.com/2025/11/03/t...
Crossing Borders: Spotlight on Literary Translation (talk at Boston's Center in Forced Displacement. April 2025)
www.ktravula.com/2025/11/cros...
