Literary Hub

See Yoko Tawada and Tatyana Tolstaya Read Their Stories

Last month, writers Yoko Tawada and Tatyana Tolstaya read at 92Y’s Poetry Center. Watch (and read!) excerpts from their new books.

*

Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960, moved to Hamburg when she was twenty-two, and then to Berlin in 2006. She writes in both Japanese and German, and has published several books—stories, novels, poems, plays, essays—in both languages including The Bridegroom Was a Dog (2003), for which she won the Akutagawa Prize; Where Europe Begins (2002); Facing the Bridge (2007); The Naked Eye (2009); Memoirs of a Polar Bear (2016). Her honors and awards include the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, the Goethe Medal, the Kleist Prize and the inaugural Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. Her novel The Emissary is out from New Directions.

Yoko Tawada reads from The Emissary

__________________________________

Tatyana Tolstaya is was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Her short-story collections are On the Golden Porch (1987); Sleepwalker in a Fog (1992); White Walls (2007); and Aetherial Worlds (2018), recently published in a translation by Anya Migdal. She is also the author of a novel, The Slynx (2001), and Pushkin’s Children: Writings on Russia and Russians (2003), a collection of essays. She has also written for The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker, and, for twelve years, was the co-host of The School for Scandal, a popular Russian talk show covering culture and politics. Ms. Tolstaya last appeared at the Poetry Center in October 2007, alongside Andrea Barrett. She lives in Moscow.

Tatyana Tolstaya reads from two stories

More from Literary Hub

Literary Hub25 min read
A New Story By Rachel Kushner: “The Mayor of Leipzig”
Cologne is where cologne comes from. Did you know that? I didn’t. This story begins there, despite its title. I had flown to Cologne from New York, in order to meet with my German gallerist—Birgit whose last name I can’t pronounce (and is also the na
Literary Hub4 min read
On Catholicism and Doomscrolling in Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter
Welcome to Lit Century: 100 Years, 100 Books. Combining literary analysis with an in-depth look at historical context, hosts Sandra Newman and Catherine Nichols choose one book for each year of the 20th century, and—along with special guests—will tak
Literary Hub6 min read
Lit Hub Asks: 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers
The Lit Hub Author Questionnaire is a monthly interview featuring seven questions for five authors. This month we talk to one author with a new book and four we missed the first time around in 2020: * Andrew DuBois (Start to Figure: Fugitive Essays,

Related Books & Audiobooks