To celebrate the release of Nine Coins/Nueve monedas —winner of the Paz Prize for Poetry, presented by the National Poetry Series; published in both English and Spanish — we’re pleased to feature a statement from author Carlos Pintado in both English and Spanish.
All InTur would rent them was a Lada. Carlos was struggling with a sticky clutch when the tunnel’s sickening yellow glow exploded into the hostile glare of a Havana afternoon . . .
Night must fall in the Tolerance Zone, the same way it does everywhere. Tonight it fell hard. I watched the shipping crate in the bed of the Escalade pickup parked behind the cantina, the crate filled with the ripe kumquats—three snuffed picture brides—that Yee Chung Toy had tried to smuggle from Fujian Province to Veracruz, and then across Mexico, through Ensenada, and into San Francisco . . .
I was running a dust cloth across the top of the glass display case housing my most prized first editions—Hammett’s The Dain Curse and Christie’s Perilat End House among them—when the bell above the door jingled and a middle-aged man stepped into my used bookshop in Philadelphia’s Spring Garden neighborhood. His cashmere trench coat made me hopeful for a big sale, but the ratty Yankees cap and knockoff sunglasses he didn’t remove gave me pause . . .
“Put them on,” says Alma, my wife’s aunt, extending a pair of pink and sparkly shoes with two Velcro straps that remind me of something my great-grandfather would have worn if they were a different color and weren’t twinkling like one of my daughter’s glitter projects . . .
Every Friday, the Akashic team highlights industry news, reviews, and features from around the web. This week’s roundup comes to you from Akashic intern Alia Maria Almeida!