I have an essay on Elizabeth Bishop in Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies 33: Ocean Crossings. 

Read my essay here and you can order a print copy of the volume here. 

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https://literatura.uniandes.edu.co/evento/un-cafe-frio-con-macabea/

Watch the event on YouTube here: *https://youtu.be/GISc6-QbXpo*

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Read about  “ILLUMINATING THE CHANDELIER” — a Zoom-specific work created by Heidi Duckler Dance & performed live (virtually on Zoom) on April 30, 2020  — reviewed by Sophie Bress in the LA Dance Chronicle here & featured in a LA Times article by Makeda Easter about LA dance companies adjusting to quarantine here.

Watch the trailer here:

 

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For The Point Magazine‘s QUARANTINE JOURNAL, I wrote about my family’s experience with COVID-19.

My essay is called “Suspending Disbelief” and the link is here.

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I’m very excited to be part of ILLUMINATING THE CHANDELIER — a Heidi Duckler Dance performance that will take place virtually on April 30th at 5pm (Pacific Time) & will offer a taste of the postponed work that would have debuted April 15-18 at The Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts. Tickets are free with RSVP at this link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/illuminating-the-chandelier-tickets-102294369212

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February 28th and 29th at 8:30 pm

SOMA 2020, aka myself & Sohani Holland, bring you CONTACT

at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica 

CONTACT is a performance about bodies coming together and becoming undone through sound, movement, touch, and play. Bodies encounter other bodies, whether human-animal or material, whether fabric or image or nature’s detritus. CONTACT occurs through the unexpected, which brings risk and joy while inviting stillness and presence and the unknown.

CONTACT is brought to you by SOMA 2020, aka Magdalena Edwards & Sohani Holland & special guests, including the live performance audiovisual alchemists Peter Johnson x Amy Zimmitti (Giedion | Kirscher, Coredark Laboratories), multidisciplinary artist Amanda Maciel Antunes, Kesia Elwin, Hannaneh Shashahani, Luna Achiary, Justin Lack, Moshir Safavi, and Silent Observers. CONTACT happens before the eyes of the audience and performers, a shared experience of consciousness through layers of containment, contrast, conflict, and connection.

Magdalena Edwards – a Visiting Scholar at UCLA’s Latin American Institute – is a writer, actor, and translator obsessed with hybridity, border-crossings, and the creative process in all its public intimacies. Sohani Holland is a Los Angeles-based artist and creative director who uses performance and textiles as mediums for documenting and storytelling. Magdalena & Sohani are SOMA 2020. More at @sohanidesigns and @msmagda8lena 

&

“We Welcome You Here – CONVENE”

a group art show opening February 29th at 6pm with a reception open to the public

“We Welcome You Here – CONVENE” is an art show centered on community & transformation, the challenges of contemporary society & its antidotes. Curated by Magdalena Edwards & Sohani Holland at Highways through March 2020, “We Welcome You Here – CONVENE” opens with a reception on February 29th at 6:00pm (before CONTACT at 8.30pm). Participating artists include Amanda Maciel Antunes, ARATA Bros (Jason Araújo + Philip Salta), Nick Malis, Isaac Gimenez, Patricia Lino, El Care Barbie, Vulva la Resistencia, Hushidar Mortezaie, Mohtadi Mirak, Dominic Gallelli, Magdalena Edwards, Sohani Holland, Vladimir Manuel & Silent Observers.  

Performance Tickets: $20.00 Student and Senior $25.00 General Admission
Gallery Show Reception: Free and Open to the Public

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February 1, 2020, at 3pm at ARTBOOK Hauser & Wirth in DTLA, please join me to celebrate new translations of Silvina Ocampo’s work by Suzanne Jill Levine, Jessica Powell, and Katie Lateef-Jan and published by City Lights. More information on the event here.

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I wrote an essay about the complicated stewardship of Clarice Lispector’s legacy & my experience translating her novel The Chandelier (New Directions 2018). Read the essay, which appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books on August 16, 2019, here — & listen to my podcast with LARB AV here.

My essay was cited by Nina Siegal in the New York Times here, and by Johanna Hedva in The White Review here. It was also written up by The Poetry Foundation’s Harriet the Blog here. It was chosen as “Best of 2019: Arts & Culture” by Longreads (one of nine pieces) here. It was one of the 15 most read pieces published by the Los Angeles Review of Books in 2019 here. 

You can also read my essay in Portuguese in Brazil’s Jornal Rascunho here, and in Spanish in Buenos Aires-based Revista Transas here.

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You’re going to love this conversation I had with Jennifer Croft about her new book HOMESICK (Unnamed Press 2019), her writing process & her experience as the translator of Nobel Literature Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s novel FLIGHTS (Riverhead 2018) for FULL STOP Magazine

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We’ve advanced to the FINALS!!!

SHORT+SWEET HOLLYWOOD FESTIVAL

sponsored by NBC, Argentum Studios, Final Draft & More

at the Marilyn Monroe Theatre at the Lee Strasberg Institute in West Hollywood

Latinx Theater FINALS on October 27th, 2019!

Read a review of our play REY Y ATENEA here.

xx

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Our short film A SHORT STORY — written & directed by Lucia Senesi and starring Magdalena Edwards, Nena Zinovieff, and Brenda Banda — premieres at the LA Shorts International Film Fest on Saturday July 20th at 1pm at the NoHo Lammle. Tickets on sale on July 2nd.

 

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I translated an excerpt from Brazilian writer Márcia Tiburi’s novel Under My Feet, My Whole Body for Words Without Borders. Read it here.

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HOUSES WITHOUT WALLS is a one-act play by Susannah Rodriguez Drissi that had its world premier at the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2018. We have had five sold-out performances, received many thrilling reviews including a write-up in UCLA’s Daily Bruin, won a Producers’ Encore Award from Fringe, the Better Lemons Fringe Audience Award, and the hearts of our audience members. We have one more performance on July 11 at 8.30pm. We would love to see you there.

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May 22nd at 8pm I’ll be at LA’s Stories Books & Café (1716 W. Sunset Boulevard, LA, CA 90026) with HOWARD BLOOM to celebrate his new book HOW I ACCIDENTALLY STARTED THE SIXTIES (Rare Bird Lit). Join us!

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My short film ORION, SUMMER & RITA screens at the OUTFEST FUSION film festival in Los Angeles on March 13th at 7.30pm! I first went to OUTFEST in 2013 to watch the Brazilian director Bruno Barreto’s film REACHING FOR THE MOON (FLORES RARAS) starring Miranda Otto as Elizabeth Bishop and Gloria Pires as Lota de Macedo Soares, which I wrote about here for The Paris Review, so it is particularly thrilling for me to show my work at this festival. I’ll write about my OUTFEST experience on the blog soon!

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I’m working on Insta-films (under one minute) for Female Filmmaker Friday:

IMAGINE A WOMAN/IMAGINA UMA MULHER. https://www.instagram.com/p/BgFQzTcBJuq/

CRIME — A MICRO MINI-SERIES starring Magdalena E. & Tatiana T. 
Crime: 1.Espelho/Mirror. https://instagram.com/p/Bfi3lQEh2Yl/
Crime: 2.Fazer/To Do. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf0_EH0Bb-I/ 

Ex-Valentine. https://instagram.com/p/BfRJ4_rBwTi/
Never Hurts to Ask. https://instagram.com/p/BfAiuLWhvJC/
Look at Me. https://instagram.com/p/BeukbrHhKuS/
The Red Backpack. https://instagram.com/p/BecZAeNBMa3/

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Happy New Year + Feliz Ano Novo! This Friday night January 5th, at 6.30pm, we’ll be celebrating the New Year with a literary reading in NYC with fellow translators from Cedilla & Co. at the Brazilian Endowment for the Arts. Please join us!

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I will participate in a conference titled AFTER CLARICE: LISPECTOR’S LEGACY at Oxford November 17-18, 2017. I look forward to sharing more soon about the conference and my presentation, which delves into Clarice Lispector’s second novel O LUSTRE / THE CHANDELIER while tapping into themes unfurled during my one-woman show I Wanna Be Robert De Niro (World Premier: Hollywood Fringe Festival 2017)!

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I joined Michael Cathcart at ABC RN in Australia, as well as writers and fellow Lispectorians Lisa Thatcher and Shannon Burns, for Book and Art’s Latin American Book Club to discuss the book of the month The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector. You can listen to the audio of our hour-long discussion, which took place the morning of June 29 in Australia and the late afternoon of June 28 in California (wild!), here.

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I’m doing my one-woman show I WANNA BE ROBERT DE NIRO for the Hollywood Fringe Festival in June. Show dates include June 4th (2.30pm), June 10th (8.30pm), June 14th (11pm), June 22nd (8pm), and June 25th (2.30)pm. FREE tickets  are available starting May 1st through the Fringe website here or Brown Paper Tickets here.

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Join me April 1-2, 2017, at BinderCon LA, hosted at UCLA, for a panel on HOW TO BE A MEDIA HYBRID. I’ll be moderating a dynamic conversation with six powerful women who are navigating Hollywood as actors, writers, directors, and producers.

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I’ll be speaking with Mexican novelists Valeria Luiselli and Guadalupe Nettel at the Mark Taper Auditorium in DTLA on February 23rd at 7.15pm.  Join us for this free event co-presented by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles’ ALOUD series and the Consulate General of Mexico in Los Angeles — tickets at the link.

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Here are my thoughts on  Forrest Gander’s translations of Pablo Neruda’s lost poems THEN COME BACK: The Lost Neruda (Copper Canyon Press) for Boston Review.

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My piece on the results of the US presidential elections: “THIS MORNING –– November 9, 2016″ for Medium.

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I attended the American Literary Translators Association annual meeting in Oakland October 6th – 9th. I gave a paper titled “Elizabeth Bishop, Constantin Stanislavski, Truthful Performance, and Translation.” I also read from my translation-in-progress of Juan Emar’s posthumous novel LOVE.

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“Conversation Interrupted, Conversation Begun”  is a piece I wrote for Medium on my father Sebastian Edwards’ new memoir.

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June 2nd is National Gun Violence Awareness Day and the #WearOrange campaign. I wrote “A DIFFERENT KIND OF RAIN DAY: 3 Years After the Santa Monica College Shooting, a Shooting at UCLA” for Medium (June 2, 2016).

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I wrote “Prince Left Us an Instruction Manual”  for Medium (April 28, 2016). In this essay I am thinking about Prince and the American lyric, Prince and pleasure, Prince as read by Touré and Daphne Brooks, Prince and what he wants us to do now that he’s gone.

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My conversation with Forrest Gander about Raúl Zurita appears in the latest volume of Essay Press’s chapbook series: Psychogeographical Romance: Three Interviews, edited by Leonard Schwartz (November 2015). I was also asked to write the “Afterword,” an opportunity to think intensely about Zurita alongside poets Jennifer Scappettone and Yolanda Castaño.

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Here is my chat with the hosts of the Los Angeles Review of Book‘s LARB Radio Hour on Clarice Lispector’s Complete Stories (New Directions 2015) translated by Katrina Dodson (October 29, 2015).

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 I spoke with filmmaker and essayist Alex Mar about ritual, spiritual practice, portals to life & death, and community within the American paganism movement, which she explores in her new book Witches of America (FSG 2015). The interview appears in The Millions (October 21, 2015).

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On October 14, 2015, at 7.30pm at Skylight Books in Los Feliz, I spoke with Katrina Dodson, the translator of Clarice Lispector’s Complete Stories (New Directions 2015). Event Address: 1818 N Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027

Podcast here!

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My speculative meditation on Rachel Cusk’s Medea and my thoughts on her latest novel Outline (FSG 2015) in the Los Angeles Review of Books (September 25, 2015).

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I discuss New Directions’ The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector (translated by Katrina Dodson and edited by Benjamin Moser) in The Millions (August 10, 2015).

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I had a fascinating conversation with novelist and poet Jennifer Clement as part of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles’ ALOUD Series (May 14, 2015). The podcast is here.

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My review of Alice Fulton’s new book of poems Barely Composed is in the May/June 2015 issue of Boston Review 

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“Cookie On My Mind” – my piece on longing for Cookie Lyon and season 2 of Fox’s “Empire” – is up at the Los Angeles Review of Books (March 25, 2015).

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My interview with Adrienne Rich on poetry, politics, and Chile, published for the first time in English, is at The Critical Flame (March 23, 2015).

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My essay “On Waiting and Sugar” is up at the Los Angeles Review of Books — LARB Blog. (November 15, 2014.)

This is a hybrid affair, a lyric meditation on waiting that relies on a diverse cast of characters including Adam Phillips, Miguel de Unamuno, Elizabeth Bishop, Jorge Luis Borges, Kara Walker, Dunkin Donuts, Al Pacino, and long lines of strangers.

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My review of Joshua Wolf Shenk’s new book Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs can be read at Rewire Me (November 5, 2014).

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My poem “Paz with a ‘Z'” is up with Silver Birch Press (September 26, 2014).

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The Millions published the essay “‘My Disease Feels Beautiful to Me’: On the Work of Raúl Zurita” on September 25, 2014.

(And here is a shoutout from The Poetry Foundation’s Harriet the Blog.)

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I wrote “Look! Our Bodies in Play” about the American artist Michael Sagato for his solo show at the Geary in New York City (April 2014).

(My essay was quoted by Artsy Editorial here.)

 

My CV is here.