Esther King

Very dystopian timing. I’ve been working on this since November.

Thanks @thedialmag.bsky.social

Lea Ypi, Joy Williams and Julia Widelocha on Translation — The Dial A conversation from the Bergen International Literary Festival.

In a conversation at the Bergen International Literary Festival, Albanian author Lea Ypi and American poet Joy Williams discussed translations of their work with Polish translator Julia Wiedlocha—and how they feel about big changes to their texts and being translated by AI.

Monarch butterflies on a tree. Title below reads 'Meditations – Esther King on Leo Boix's Southernmost: Sonnets' with a subheading reading 'Wasafiri 124 online exclusive'

@esthermavis.bsky.social reads Leo Boix's collection SOUTHERNMOST SONNETS (Chatto & Windus 2025), reflecting on the 'push and pull of belonging to different places' and how it has shaped her understandings of home, geography, partnership, family, and grief.

Read: www.wasafiri.org/content/medi...

Meditations — Esther King on Leo Boix's Southernmost: Sonnets Esther King finds kinship in Argentine British poet Leo Boix's Southernmost:

I wrote a piece for Wasafiri about living in multiple languages and finding home. With thanks to the thoughtful editors at @wasafirimag.bsky.social

www.wasafiri.org/content/medi...

Pieces of Gaza | Madeleine Schwartz Until 2024, the objects on display in “Trésors sauvés de Gaza” (“Treasures Saved from Gaza”), an exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris that

“As world powers debate Gaza’s future...what will remain of its past?”—Madeleine Schwartz (@mmschwartz.bsky.social) on Gaza’s archaeological relics https://go.nybooks.com/46bM65P

The End of Mail in Denmark — The Dial Who will mourn the last letter?

Anna Juul reflects on the disappearance of physical mail in Denmark — and what a hyper-digital society gains and loses when letters, handwriting, and slower communication fade away: www.thedial.world/articles/new...

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week - Longreads In this week's Top 5 we have lessons from apartheid, clever Claude, feeling bodies anew, the power of wax, and free mining.

In our weekly Top 5:

—Lessons from apartheid (@thedialmag.bsky.social)
—Clever Claude? (@newyorker.com )
—Bodies anew (@GeorgiaReview)
—Wax on, wax off (@grist.org)
—Mine’s free (Dispatch Magazine)

longreads.com/2026/02/13/t...

A great — maybe even uplifting? — read from @imogenwk.bsky.social on Wikipedia in the age of AI

Welcome to the One-Man Regime — The Dial The US looks a lot like Turkey.

During Trump’s first term, many Americans believed he was an exception in an otherwise functional political system. But the Turkish right saw what they refused to see: The American president could do what he wanted. Kaya Genç reports: www.thedial.world/articles/new...

The Myth of the Police State — The Dial No one, not even the supposed beneficiaries, is protected.

White people were not the intended victims of South Africa’s apartheid, but the police state heavily circumscribed its white citizens’ lives. People were censored and abused. As American conservatives idealize the apartheid era, Eve Fairbanks sends a warning: no one is protected in a police state.

A very good read (and still, once again, very relevant)

Iran's Ultimate Banned Book — The Dial The Blind Owl remains essential reading for understanding the country.

When Amir Ahmadi Arian was an aspiring writer growing up in Iran, almost everyone he met told him to read Sadeq Hedayat’s 1936 novel “The Blind Owl.” The work is not a pinnacle of literary craftsmanship, Arian writes, but it is an essential text for understanding the contradictions of Iran.

“Indonesian Cigarettes” by Rafaqat Hayat — The Dial A short story.

In Rafaqat Hayat’s short story, translated from Urdu by Hammad Rind, a bus conductor is given a pack of sweet, fragrant cigarettes. The joy of owning something new and the pleasure of their unexpected taste is tinged by the reality that soon he’ll have none left. www.thedial.world/articles/lit...

The Gray Tick | Amir Ahmadi Arian In July 1987 the Hajj ceremony in Mecca turned into a bloodbath. Shia pilgrims, mostly Iranians, staged a protest, chanting against America, Israel, and

Amir Ahmadi Arian on the blackout in Iran https://go.nybooks.com/4jOx63p

Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? — The Dial How American tourists took over everything.

"We’re selling vibes, textures. A sunset on the hills in Chianti, riding a bike on an island in Sicily. Imagine us discussing it in parliament with an Italian accent: l’importanza del made in Italy. We use the English expression unironically. It’s aimed at Americans," Francesco Pacifico writes.

Our AI, Ourselves? — The Dial Recent novels reflect our own confusion about what makes us human.

How are fiction authors thinking about AI? Jessi Jezewska Stevens read a handful of recent novels that grapple with the anxiety and confusion of this new technology. Rather than predict the future as most science fiction does, these novels extend the present in an utterly recognizable way.

Why Are We So Afraid of Conversation? — The Dial A glut of self-help books promises to teach us to do it better.

“Learn all the cheat codes, participate in all the pre-game warmups: It’s still impossible to predict where a conversation might take you.” Lamorna Ash read three self-help books that promise to teach us how to have better conversations: www.thedial.world/articles/new...

Las Vegas Diaries — The Dial “These days I have no passport, no documents. And even if I manage to get one, I cannot return to Egypt.”

In 2018, two months before his 33rd birthday, Egyptian writer @ahmednaji.bsky.social arrived in the U.S. on a one-way ticket in a journey of exile and self-reinvention. These are excerpts from his journals from that time: www.thedial.world/articles/new...

Today, we’re kicking off our end-of-year fundraising campaign. Support The Dial in promoting the exchange of ideas across borders! www.thedial.world/support

Can't wait to answer your questions 👀

“They Are Liars” — The Dial Israel’s attacks in Beirut, and American complicity in them, has confirmed for many Lebanese how little they matter to the United States.

"But one fact remains and that’s if you're dead, it doesn't matter which leader 6,000 miles away never knew your name, never knew your story."

www.thedial.world/articles/new...

I wrote this last year during the worst days of the war. Much of it still applies.

Delighted to have a new article with The Dial - this time on tech giants, their alarming inflation of our GDP, and the mutation of the Dublin docklands from the early 2000s to today. Thanks to The Dial for the commission & their wonderful & astute editorial support.

What’s the Point of a Global Climate Target? — The Dial Countries pledged to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Is it time to abandon it?

What's the point of a global climate target?

@sophieyeo.bsky.social on where 1.5C came from and where it's going:

www.thedial.world/articles/new...

"The Glamour Zoo," by Li Jingrui — The Dial A short story.

“The Glamour Zoo”, short story by Li Jingrui, tr. me, in yesterday’s @thedialmag.bsky.social
Here’s the link:
swe01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com

Bears at the Border — The Dial How immigration and tariff policies affect the animals that roam between the U.S. and Mexico.

“Border bears,” bears that roam between nations like the U.S. and Mexico, risk being disturbed by immigration policies and tariff-related threats. If President Trump continues to build the wall, these animals’ migration paths could end up completely blocked. Ganesh Marín reports.

This was such a fantastic read, and a real pleasure to review for @wwborders.bsky.social

Guantánamo's Secret History — The Dial Trump isn't the first president to use the military base for the U.S.'s dirty secrets

Over the 1990s, Washington transformed Guantánamo Bay into a theater of extraterritorial mass incarceration to hold tens of thousands of Haitian and Cuban asylum-seekers fleeing political violence and economic collapse. Miriam Pensack reports on this little-known history.

I translated Sabrina's great reporting from German for @thedialmag.bsky.social — read her dispatch here👇

Consider the Snail — The Dial “In writing about snails, I wanted to write about slowness and strangeness, solitude and death, hibernation and estivation.”

I have a new translation up at @thedialmag.bsky.social, Lauren Bastide's Courir l'escargot, which we're calling Consider the Snail. I loved this book & was so happy to get to translate some excerpts from it, about slowness, failure, grief, alterity, cycles, & goo www.thedial.world/articles/lit...