Poets & Writers Theater

“I think we’re all born explorers. When I look at my kids, they want to climb before they can walk,” says Erling Kagge in this interview with Santiago Rivas Camargo from the 2018 Hay Festival in Cartagena, Colombia. Kagge’s new book, Walking: One Step at a Time (Pantheon Books, 2019), translated from the Norwegian by Becky L. Crook, is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Every time someone goes to see a Shakespeare play in Russia or in Italy or in Brazil...what they’re actually getting is a version of Shakespeare that some translator has interpreted.” In this video, translator Daniel Hahn talks about the universal elements of Shakespeare’s plays. Hahn is donating part of his award money from the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award, which he won with author José Eduardo Agualusa, to help establish a new prize for debut literary translation in the U.K.

“If you look at the Greek myths, they’re always about unhappy families; Aristotle told us that politics starts in the family—I think that’s true.” Deborah Levy, whose most recent novel, Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton, 2016), is shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, talks about the elements of family in Hamlet that have always haunted her. This video is part of the Hay Festival: Talking About Shakespeare video series celebrating William Shakespeare’s four hundredth anniversary.