Issue 141

Winter & Spring 2012

  • Welcome to the fourth issue of TriQuarterly Online. We are excited to present our first-ever collection of video essays, curated by accomplished video essayists John Bresland and Marilyn Freeman. We also have fiction from Bonnie Nadzam who recently received the the 2011 Center for Fiction's Flaherty Dunnan First Novel Prize for LAMB (Other Press, 2011). We are excited to showcase translated pieces from two international contributors. The first is prominent, Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan. His work was translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah who also has poetry in this issue. The second is a short story from prolific Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop. Finally, we have some new, young voices that we are eager to share. Please enjoy these writers as well as the rest of our outstanding new fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. We look forward to receiving your comments at triquarterlyonline@northwestern.edu.

    EDITOR’S NOTE

    One could argue that text, onscreen, feathered with images and sound, is becoming more like video. And video is becoming more like text. How are writers to contend with this? How does the visceral nature of digital technology—sound, image and the sometimes cruel edgelessness of the screen—alter the writer’s relationship to language? The seven video essays in this collection, curated by John Bresland and Marilyn Freeman, raise a host of thrilling questions, not least: How is writing today different than it was yesterday? What does it mean for writers to build a text with, as Virginia Woolf once cannily advised, whatever pieces come your way?


    Managing Editor: Amanda Morris
    Faculty Advisor: Susan Harris
    Copy Editor: Ruth Goring
    Graduate Fellow: Ben Schacht

    Book Review Editors: Karen Zemanick, Leigh Arber
    Fiction Editors: Matt Carmichael, Schuyler Dickson, Cathy Gao, Tedd Hawks, Sarah Kalsbeek, Ankur Thakkar, Stephanie Tran
    Nonfiction Editor: Sarah Hollenbeck
    Poetry Editor: Lana Rakhman
    Chapbook Review Editor: Anthony Opal
    Art Director: Patrick Allen Carberry

    Staff: Emily Ayshford, Rebecca Bald, Danielle Burhop, Michelle Cabral, Matt Carmichael, Jen Companik, Vincent Francone, Cathy Gao, Amanda Gebhardt, Barbara Ghoshal, Eric Grawe, Dane Hamann, Noelle Havens, Elizabeth Herbert, Russ Hicks, Gretchen Kalwinski, Adam Kovac, Nath Jones, Jen Lawrence, Eldad Malamuth, Carrie Muehle, Dana Norris, Tien (Mimi) Nguyen, Hana Park, Cory Phare, Lydia Pudzianowski, Nate Renie, Mark Rentfro, Paula Root, Tal Rosenberg, Virginia Smith, Megan Marie Sullivan, Amanda Tague, and Myra Thompson

Poetry Ghassan Zaqtan Poetry Ghassan Zaqtan

The Camp Prostitute

Translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah

The intentions of those heading to her house

could be touched by fingers

chaste and proud.

Read More
Poetry Ghassan Zaqtan Poetry Ghassan Zaqtan

Preliminary Sketch

Translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah

The talk that remained in the house, when we went out,

remained alone

and agitated

pacing its domains

like a stubborn wolf.

Read More
Poetry Ghassan Zaqtan Poetry Ghassan Zaqtan

A Graphic 1995

Translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah

The endings are not ours

not anyone’s.

Endings belong to strangers

who weren’t born on wagons,

people we find in the dust of corridors

and who happen in speech

Read More