>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. 
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>> John Cole: The Library of Congress is very pleased to be able to continue to be part of this program. Rob Casper, as I said, is sorry he can't be here. But he has done a wonderful job in expanding our poetry and literature program in the few years he's been here. And we have moved very widely throughout the organizational structure of the Library of Congress to participate with our Area Studies Divisions, which are the Hispanic Division, the European Division, the African and Middle East Division, and one other division I will think of in a moment. But they are very important in the overall work of the Library of Congress. And this is a part of the library that I'm happy to say in my opening very few comments has been formalized in a new -- and this means something in an organization the size of the Library of Congress. We are roughly a library of 160 million items of which more than half are in languages other than English. We have a book collection of only 30 million item. But we have important manuscripts, music, and other kinds of materials because of the copyright deposit law being here. And so in effect, our collections are international, including the six overseas offices that the library has. But we have never had a unit that really was formally described as something that included international outreach, and we now have that. And the Center for the Book and the Poetry and Literature Office are part of it. Dr. James Billington, who has retired this year as librarian, made the first steps towards this. And we now have a service unit called National and International Outreach. And I think having it, it will help facilitate the kinds of programs that are of great interests to us on the international side, and I know, too, both the Poetry and Literature Office and the Center for the Book. It includes national programs such as the Center for the Book and the National Book Festival, but it also includes the World Digital Library, which is some of the digitization efforts that are underway. So the overall picture on the international side at the Library of Congress is very positive. And we're so pleased to be able to continue to host this event and very pleased to have as partners the US Department of State and the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. So to get us started, I'm pleased to introduce, as I did last year, Bruce Armstrong who is the Director of the Office of Citizen Exchanges at the US Department of State. Bruce?
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[ Applause ]
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>> Bruce Armstrong: Thanks very much. First of all, I just want to welcome everyone here on behalf of the US Department of State who's come out for this terrific event. It's really wonderful you're here. And I think it is so great that these writers have an opportunity to present their work, their ideas in a setting, the Library of Congress, that is so important for this country. And as an American, I have to say it makes me really happy every time I come here and every time I'm in the other building, the main building, to think that United States has palaces of books. Because these are big palatial buildings, but they're not palatial buildings for bureaucrats, or army officers, or whatever. They're big palatial buildings for ideas and information, and I find that a wonderful thing. So I want to thank the Library of Congress for hosting us. We really appreciate it. And I certainly also want to thank Chris Merrill and all his staff, his team, for making the Iowa writers -- I'm living in the past. The international --
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[ Laughter ]
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The International Writing Program possible because it is so clear that, without the work of Chris and without his team, there would be no program. So, Chris, thanks very much.
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[ Applause ]
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For us at the State Department, it's a really huge honor to be able to support this program. And why? Well, I can take care of that very quickly. Because it's about freedom of expression. It's about nurturing freedom of expression. It's about celebrating freedom of expression. And as we see it, freedom of expression is essential to have in any country to have a truly dynamic and truly open society. And we feel that's true for each individual country, and we feel that's true for the world as a whole. So freedom of expression, a fundamental value, and one which is at the heart in this program. We also believe strongly in the International Writing Program because it is an exchange. And we at the State Department place a great deal of value on exchanges. And why is that? There's also a very simple reason for that. We think that, indeed, it's important for diplomats, men and women in suits with an official government function, to talk to each other. And that's a very important thing from various countries to have that dialogue. But we also believe it's equally important, and in many ways in the modern world even more important, that just people, all different types of people, talk to each other across national boundaries, across regional boundaries, across the boundaries of continents. And that we think is so important. We have a whole range of exchange programs for all different types of people ranging from university professors, university students, teenagers, young professionals. We have cultural diplomacy programs such as this. We have sports-based exchange programs. But they all have one thing in common, and that's the simple fact that when people from different cultures, different countries, get together and talk to each other without government in the way, without anyone in there saying what they should talk about or which direction the conversation should go in, when they simply encounter each other in a free dialogue, that is a very positive thing. And for that reason, we're very proud to be able to support that. And certainly the International Writers Program is one really good example of that. And so that leads me to the participants themselves. So I want to congratulate the people here at the podium and also everyone in the audience who is part of the program for having taken part in this excellent program and having completed your fellowship. And I really hope it's been a positive experience for you, both for your work, for your art, for your development as a writer. But I also hope as a human being for your encounter with people from different cultures, different countries, and including American culture, whatever that is these days. Because as I've believe you've probably seen during your time here, one of the truly remarkable things about the United States and one of the truly wonderful things about the United States is its incredible diversity. And I think that is such a positive thing. And what that means is there is not just one American narrative, one American story, there are countless ones. And yet somehow, hopefully, they all come together into some kind of highly complex, highly contradictory but extremely interesting story that is America today. So I hope when you return that you will continue with your art, with your work, with your very serious endeavor that you are engaged in. I hope you will share your experience with your communities. And I hope very much that you'll stay in touch with each other because that's a very important part of this program. So again, thank you all for being here. And what a pleasure it is to be in this great institution. Thank you.
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[ Applause ]
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And now I'd like to introduce Chris Merrill.
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>> Christopher Merrill: Thank you, Bruce. Thank you, John. I also want to thank [inaudible] and her boss, Rob Casper, who have put this extraordinary event together. And a special thanks to [inaudible] who has been working with the International Writing Program for a great many years helping to make this happen year after year. The International Writing Program was founded in 1967. It grew out of the very famous Iowa Writers' Workshop. And the story goes that Paul Engle, the director of the workshop, for a very long time was out on a boat with his soon-to-be second wife, the Chinese novelist Nieh Hualing. And she said to him, "Why don't you start an international writing program?" He said that was the craziest idea he had ever heard. And then the two of them set about putting together this program. And in the nearly half century since, we've had the good look to host over 1,400 distinguished writers from more than 140 countries. And among all the things that Bruce just enumerated that we hoped the writers will do, he did leave out one crucial thing. And that is that they do have a lot of fun, too.
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[ Laughter ]
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And that's part of the beauty of the cultural exchange. This fall, we had 34 writers from 33 countries. They gave readings every week and panel discussions. They attended classes, gave lectures, were part of a translation workshop. They visited farms. They went to see Effigy Mounds. They took part in a book festival in Iowa City, UNESCO City of Literature. They traveled to either New Orleans or Seattle. They went to Chicago and gave a reading at the Poetry Foundation. And after we conclude our events here in Washington, they'll travel on to New York and their three months in the States will come to an end. But we hope that some of the magic that they experienced here and created during their time in Iowa City and in this country will spillover and shape their work in the coming years. Just to give you a taste of how we're going to do this today, as Bruce said, a lot of the writers are in the audience. So I imagine that after each of our four writers give us a taste of their work, a reading, and then we have some discussion. We'll open it up to a larger question and answer. So in order of the writers, at my far end we have Harris Khalique who is a poet and a nonfiction writer from Pakistan. He writes in both English and Urdu. He's the author of eight books, including "Between You and Your Love". And he's received many prizes both for his work in English and in Urdu. His poems have been anthologized internationally. And he is a campaigner for worker's, women's, and minority rights in Pakistan. Sitting next to him is Margarita (Maggie) Mateo Palmer. She is a poet, a nonfiction writer, and most recently a fiction writer from Cuba. She has won six iterations of the Premio Nacional de la Critica in Cuba. She has lectured at Tulane and at Harvard. She has had fellowships there. She's a member of the Cuban Academy of Language. And in light of the changing relationship between the United States and Cuba, it's really a great thrill for us to have Maggie here this year. Sitting next to Maggie is Nael Eltoukhy, a fiction writer and a translator from Egypt. He's the author of five books of fiction and two books of translation from Hebrew. In an event this morning at the State Department, we got yet another one of those kinds of revelations that make the International Writing Program so interesting. The sense that, even as he is sharpening his understanding of Arabic in his translations from the Hebrew, he's also finding ways back to some of the distant origins of the language through the variable language of Hebrew. And finally, sitting next to Nael is Birgul Oguz, who is a fiction writer and a nonfiction writer from Turkey. She was a part of a program this summer. Between the Lines brings together young writers from this country and from other countries every year from Russia and the Arab-speaking world. And this summer, we brought her together with Arman of Armenia, lately shorn of his very thick beard so that we don't always recognize him.
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[ Laughter ]
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And we brought together American, Armenian, and Turkish writers. That was a lively conversation that has persisted through the fall. And it's nice to come to the end and hear from Birgul whose latest book of short stories is called "Hah". She won the 2014 European Union prize for literature for "Hah", which is now being translated into 13 European languages. And she's working on a PhD in English literature at Bosphorus University. So each of the four writers will give us a short reading, and then we'll begin a discussion. Harris, the floor is yours.
>> Harris Khalique: Thank you, Chris.
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Thank you very much, Christopher. And thank you very much, everybody. And I have a story to tell about the Library of Congress. This was the first institution which actually acquired my books in the late 1990's and brought those to the United States. And the story is that the person, he was a local Pakistani employee of the US Consulate in Karachi who used to work for Library of Congress. He met me first when I was protesting as a student outside the consulate.
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[ Laughter ] 
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And so that was something that continues to happen. But he recognized me from there. And he got to know through my publisher that the book is out, so he came and he acquired the book. So it is indeed a privilege to be able to share my work and present my work in the Library of Congress. I'm going to read a few poems. But unfortunately since most of my work in Urdu is not translated into English, I will read four short poems in English and one translation from Urdu. And I will start with the poem -- usually, I use this poem to end my readings in Iowa. But I will start with this because my fellow writer from Sweden, Marie Silkeberg, used some of these lines in her piece. Which she wrote a brilliant piece. She shared it with us this morning in the State Department. So I'll start with this. And this actually is what we're going through in Pakistan. It's titled, "Burying martyrs who are heavy".
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I forgot to put on my reading glasses.
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[ Laughter ]
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"Burying martyrs who are heavy"
We are turned into a funeral procession
All 180 million of us
We carry a hundred thousand bodies on our shoulders
We are told they are martyrs and martyrs are light
Light like rose petals.
But the ones we carry are heavy
They have metal inside
Bullets, shrapnel, pellets, nails
Tips of swords and daggers broken into their flesh.
The bodies will dissolve in the mud once buried
But the metal will keep the earth hard under our feet
For long.
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"Remains"
After the massacre
The night has fallen
Moonless and dry.
Let us collect the scattered body parts
It's easier, less painful
In the darkness of the sky.
An arm cannot be made out from a leg
Fingers from toes
A child's torso from a big man's thigh.

But what about the head?
A head is a head
Whether living or dead.
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This is a poem which I wrote after the terrorist attack on a Peshawar school which killed 140 children 10 months ago.
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It's titled "Gulsher". This is actually a translation. This one is also a translation or kind of a recreation into English. But I wrote the poem first in Urdu.
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"Gulsher"
Gulsher, who was 13
Just loved whisking his sister up from deep slumber
He just loved hiding away his grandma's pen
He just loved teasing his mum by being brash
He just loved nagging his daddy for more cash.

Now he will not wake his sister up
Now he will not hide his grandma's pen
Now he will not pester his mum again
Now he will not eye his daddy's purse
From school today, he came back in a hearse.

The school was squashed in terror's embrace
Massacre of the innocents, no mercy, no grace.

When the cortege left home, the day was cold and dry
And the old grandma... stared blankly into the sky
Shamsher, who is five, with his brother's looks
Picked up Gulsher's schoolbag, his lunchbox, his books.
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And a poem in a different mood. It's titled "She and I".
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She and I would talk of wonder and dread
of desires and disasters,
boys and girls pacing up and down
the sidewalk beside us,
milk she forgot to put back in the fridge,
writing tables, table lamps, bookshelves, kitchens,
plumbers and fixers.

She and I would talk of families,
spouses and siblings,
pets in the neighbourhood,
who have the same faith as their keepers,
of lying to loved ones about sex and night outs,
travels,
friends found when travelling,
hat racks in aircrafts with defective latches,
unkempt interiors of slow moving trains,
rivers, mountains, forests, deserts,
oceans and dreams.

She and I would talk of our country,
dust can hold us together for so long,
of Gog and Magog,
licking up the walls of sanity,
of people and their struggle,
wounds unhealed and seasons we fear.

The sibilance of sorrow creeping behind us,
we wished we chat till the world ends
and the world always ended.
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And the last poem this afternoon is a translation from Urdu. "Roses of joy". This starts to give you the flavor.
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[ Foreign Language ]
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This is how it begins.
"Roses of joy"
Let you and me today
embrace all sorrows in the world.
Let our souls imbibe all pain
and run it through our flesh and bones.
Let the warmth of sorrows
turn all pain in a resolve.

The resolve that makes the despots
tremble with fear.

The resolve espousing the verve of truth
abounds all time and space in a way
that in the veins of frail women and men
sunken in the swamp of tyranny
a new passion blooms, a new spirit flows.

The new passion
dries up the swamp of tyranny
grows fresh roses of joy.
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Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
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[ Applause ]
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>> Margarita Mateo Palmer: Good afternoon. I will read -- mm-hmm.
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[ Laughter ]
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Good afternoon.
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[ Laughter ]
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I will read some fragments from my novel "Inside the White Madhouse". It is a text in which the mother of the protagonist talks with her daughter's psychiatrist and she tells her some things about her daughter. The text has been translated by Rebecca Hanssens-Reed, and the chapter is called The Red Marquise Speaks.
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There was another poet who committed suicide in those years. He threw himself off the balcony of his apartment in [inaudible]. Maria de la Pilar knew him, too, but his death didn't affect her as much. He was sick with nerves. He'd been admitted to a psychiatric unit a few times. But I don't read any of the young poets these days. I don't like any of the stuff my daughter reads. I have a bookshelf in my room with lots of books about the history of Cuba, which is one of my passions, and books by my favorite authors. I am really creative. When I read, I like to change things. A little while ago, I improved a poem by Pablo Neruda; "Night on the Island".
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[ Laughter ]
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It sounded a lot nicer when I was done with it even though Maria de la Pilar wouldn't admit it.
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[ Laughter ]
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That's always been my job; fixing what other people write. I used to be a secretary, a stenographer typist in English and Spanish, a bilingual assistant as they say now. It was up to me to amend the atrocities my bosses wrote who were engineers or economists, but they didn't know a thing about Spanish grammar or even spelling. They let me do this work because I never changed the meaning of what they wanted to say, much less alter any facts. I was always very careful about that. I simply improved what they wrote like I did with that Neruda poem I like so much. I cut out the whole first part.
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[ Laughter ]
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It's something stupid about being asleep. And I heard it start with that gorgeous verse that goes, "Perhaps your dream drifted from mine and through the dark sea was seeking me." And then I changed the part where he talks about the taste of earth and made it about flowers.
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[ Laughter ]
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You should never tell a woman that her mouth tastes like dirt or seaweed. That would kill the romance. True lovers would compare their love to something more beautiful. Listen to this difference. "Your mouth came from your dream, gave me the taste of lilies, of rosewaters, of gardenias." I also cut out some phrases that I thought were cheesy. And for the ending, I added part of a really lovely song by Rafael Hernandez that goes, "Your laughter is a rhyme of happy notes. Your hair moves like waves on the sea. Your mouth has the scent of gardenias, the scent of gardenias, the scent of love."
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[ Laughter ]
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Now that's a strong ending, not like the verse that Neruda wrote. 
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[ Laughter ]
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Once, I tried to read a book that my daughter absolutely loves, one by Lezama Lima. That's when I confirmed what I have always believed. The writers my daughter reads cost her a lot of harm. It's like they're adding fuel to the fire that's already burning inside that head of hers. I picked that big novel "Paradiso". And right away, I noticed all the stuff in there that wasn't necessary. There were so many words, whole sentences even, that were too much. I started cross things out. I couldn't help myself. For me, correcting what I read is like doing crossword puzzles. I enjoy it so much. Sometimes where Lezama put one word, I put a different word, one that's simpler. I had to check the dictionary a few times. But mostly, I just crossed things out. Lines, and lines, and lines. I crossed out a lot. Maria de la Pilar didn't like any of it. She's very conventional. She's not capable of being innovative like I am. 
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[ Laughter ]
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When she started whining that I'd ruined a valuable copy of the book, I said to myself, "She's being stubborn. She won't listen," and I didn't respond to her. "All that reading that she does costs her a lot of pain, doctor. Anything by that man, Lezama, really upsets her nerves. I think you should prohibit my daughter from reading in the hospital."
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[ Laughter ]
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Those were really hard times. There was no electricity, no water, no gas, no food. "Well, you know, as well as I do, doctor, I don't have to tell you." And in the middle of that crisis, my daughter decided to start rescuing animals. First, it was a hideous dog covered with scabies that she kept out in the yard because it couldn't even walk anymore. Its paws were so swollen. Next, it is was four newborn kittens she found outside the building. Luckily, the cats all died. "That's what she believes, doctor. But the truth is, just between you and me, I was the one who killed them."
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[ Laughter ]
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"One at a time, little by little, so she wouldn't suddenly fall into a depression because she was quite unbalanced in those days." Each time we found a new dead one, I said to her, "Poor little creature. Don't be sad because it's in heaven now."
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[ Laughter ]
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"Don't you see how frail they are? It's impossible to save them." She looked at me sidelong with an expression that startled me a little. But no way. How could she suspect something like that when she's the most trusting person in the world? I'd almost called her a fool. She's incapable of thinking poorly of anyone. Every time Maria de la Pilar showed up at the house with a new rescue, I wanted to disappear. I looked at that parade of animals and said to myself, "As if we didn't have enough problems already." It was the last straw, "Now you tell me, doctor, how could we share the few scraps we had with all those stray animals when we could barely even feed ourselves? There was no way I would allow that. But my daughter didn't get it. She wouldn't listen to me. She was really messed up back then. The last animal she rescued was a mange dog, which we still have. That animal has got seven lives. Listen, I couldn't with him. Once, I realized he was immune to every kind of poison out there. [inaudible] doctor, you wouldn't believe it just put him to sleep like a baby. He even snored like a human. I tried to find any other means to get rid of him. I ended up giving a dollar to a kid from the slum down the street to sic his government on him. And he did it." That afternoon, I was sure the doc from the slum had finished off that beast. But no way, Maria de la Pilar was there to save him. She wrapped that bloody lump in my towel, a beautiful towel that my daughter sent me from Miami, and carried him to the veterinary clinic where they stitched him up. My daughter spent an entire night on the floor lying next to the dog to make sure he didn't scratch at his stitches. She cleaned his wounds, lowered his fever with Tylenol, and marched all over Havana to find penicillin. Eventually, the dog was saved. He didn't even have any scars left, though one of his ears was damaged and now it fluffs down over his eye like a pirate's eyepatch. "To be honest, doctor, he started to grow on me when I saw how resilient he was and how hard he fought for his life. I even say that he's like me in that way. The Grim Reaper will have to work as hard as he can to get me because I don't give up easily. They'll have to carry me out in my coffin." That part of our lives was the most miserable ever. We didn't have a single drop of milk. Sometimes, not even a piece of bread to lift to our mouth or a chip of soap to clean up the animal's piece. It was a matter of survival. It's that simple. And it was my job to watch over my daughter, and my grandson, and an innocent little boy who really looked up to his mother. He didn't realize the danger she was putting him in by bringing all those sick animals into the house. If it wasn't for that recent doctor, how do you think that someone like me who wouldn't even hurt a fly could ever think of doing all the things that I've told you?
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[ Laughter ]
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[ Applause ]
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>> Nael Eltoukhy: Good evening, everybody. Thank you for coming here, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to read from my book. I'm going to read now the first chapter in my last book, which is named "The Woman of Karantina". The chapter speaks about a love story between two dogs, male and female, and even introduction for the whole novel after that.
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The dog, which was in the habit of rummaging through the trash, could not find the trash it was in the habit of rummaging through.
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[ Laughter ]
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It was March 28, 2064. For many reasons, to be related herein and hereafter, this day was the grimmest day in Alexandria's history. Everyone suffered its sting, but the one who felt it most was the dog that couldn't find the trash. He hunted along the Metro station's wall where the great heap should have been, with clouds of circling flies hovering above it, but found nothing. Not even the
wall itself. The neighborhood was strangely exposed to the sun. Like a desert. The dog was hungry. He trotted the length of the station wall, or where the wall should have been. He wagged his scabbed tail. Gazed into the
distance. Rolled in the dust and rubbed his body against the wall. He was famished and frustrated, despondent and hot. Darkness gathered over the scene and there was nothing, not a single thing, to be found anywhere. He
began to bark, and far away he saw a length of piping move. He gave another bark and it was then, with this second bark, that something struck his leg,
something hot and hard, exactly like a bullet. For sure, a bullet. One leg lamed and one leg gunshot, the dog continued to sweep the neighborhood with his eyes, hunting for some other heap of trash and careful not to make any sound that might bring another bullet his way. Feeble, bleeding, he hid behind a dirt pile. Suddenly, his body bucked beneath a rain of gunfire. We see him now, dead on the bloodstained dust. A little while later a
passing woman picks him up and chucks him into a deep trench. Maybe it seems to her the best way--the most seemly--to bury him. Some unhappy thing has happened here. A life has come to a close, and with it a great tale. Fate will play its games, will bring together what belongs apart. A man may have standing, wealth, and honor, and all at once be left bereft, without standing, wealth, or honor. Fate may bring two together--two colleagues,
two neighbors, two dogs from the same pack of strays--and with love bind them; then all at once, in one heartless stroke, deny each one the other. How wondrous the whims of Fate. The tale began long ago. It spread through generations, circled above sites from the south of Egypt to the north, and encompassed many a homily and
moral lesson, much profound philosophy concerning man and his desires and qualities. It is of that type so rarely found in the history of mankind, a tale of which pleasure, yearning, profitable fact, and precious counsel are conjoined. Were we obliged to describe the proceedings of this tale in a phrase, it would be "divine providence." Divine providence it was that set each and every character in his or her proper place and inspired him or her with the right thoughts at the right time. And should it fall to us to derive a lesson from this tale, then it would be that nothing is impossible; that provided his intentions are sound, then man--by the grace of his Lord, exalted and gloried be His name before and above all things--is capable of anything. The day the dog was killed, another dog, a bitch, was over on the other side of Karmouz, although she, unlike him, was rooting through a fat heap of trash. The bitch, with suppurating hide and patched with bald spots, with swarms of fleas about the bits that still held hair, hid as the gunfire swelled, then bolted. The bitch was waiting for the dog, but a powerful resentment came to her that he would not come tonight, wouldn't come any night. Her heart was downcast, her soul despondent, and the omens were not shy to show themselves; the trash contained little food, and the sounds of explosion and gunfire took away her appetite for anything. The tale of the dog and the bitch began three months back, on a patch of wasteland. He saw her rump wiggling in front of him and jumped her. They started rubbing their bodies against each other and the fleas made their ways from his pelt to hers and vice versa. Her hide was full of sores, and his too, but this didn't prevent them taking their pleasure. They fell in love and resolved to devote themselves to one another, unto death. Now she bore his babies in her womb and all the signs were telling her she would give birth today. And all the signs were telling her that she would give birth
alone, without her mate. Frequently, the tale is greater than us. It might be the tale of a mother and father who loathe each other, or of a family, or of conflicts and interests we have not the strength to fight. And it might be the tale of a nation taking shape. The tale here is a tale of a nation taking shape. In no wise is it a tale of dogs, not even one of men, who remain, however high they rise, mere motes in the ocean of this boundless nation. We are just numbers here, not because we're nothings in ourselves, but because there are so many others besides, better or worse than us, warring with us or against us,
and the nation is the sum of all. All these little tales, these bonds of love and hate, of marriage and divorce, of kin and conflict, of inheritances affirmed by wills and deeds of ownership, of ownership without deeds and inheritance without wills, of composers' tunes and authors' works, of engineers' accounts, and of the decisions of leaders and the strong arms of the poor--of all these things is the nation made. The nation is all these things. The nation is us.
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Thank you a lot.
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[ Applause ]
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>> Birgul Oguz: Hello. Thank you for being here. I'm going to read you a whole piece from my book "Hah", which is a collection of eight and a half stories about the psychology of mourning, grieving, phases of mourning, and other kinds of different stuff like that. [Inaudible] the book is [inaudible]. And the piece that I will read, in this piece you will hear the dead speaking, and yearning for life, and celebrating the life in death. The title of the story is "Depart", and it is translated from the Turkish by Kenneth Dakan.
^M00:43:16
^M00:43:21
April is the cruelest month, breeding, greening, stirring life from stone, ooph, wresting life even from stone, whereas there, in snowy sleep, how sweet was the clattering of dry branches, the shriveling of roots, the heaviness of clouds, neither furious sun nor riotous branch, there, wrapped in sleep, we, decaying piece by piece, we, how sweet was the name of ash and the earth closed upon itself. But April gave us a nasty poke! The cruelest of all Aprils. How about I get frisky now?
    I too once knew what it was to adore the branches of spring, to wet my face in clusters of purple, to behold buds blossoming like mouth of womb, ants and turtles rousing, pup's placenta tearing, being there, as grass trembles, how fine, how good, the coolness of moss, the unfaltering bright yellow sun, the satiation of soil, the warming of the marrow of my bones - and then - just then - my heart would soften. How would you like me to get a little frisky, to soften some more?
    April is the cruelest April, you know, ooph, breeding, oh my how sap rises to branches, oyyy through branches, bird perched on branch coos cuck, sap rises through lusty bird, guhcuck. Maybe I'll run riot too would you like that, rising, ooph?
    because I hope
    On the first day, we said what a relief! Fear no more the heat 'o the sun. Nor the furious winter's rages. Tinkle tinkle, tra la la, resting in peace, tra la la.
    The third day was a first: Come on! we said, is this it?
    On the seventh day the groove got into us; bones a-rattling and a-tittering, big watery orbs in our eye sockets, tossing and turning, pearls, either orbs or pearls, and all that.
    On the fortieth day? Oyyy! My how they watered us. What was once inside the bones (long since dried up) was just about to come to life a-chirping. Not just a-chirping it was going to burst into bud. My oh my, they watered away as the custom goes but happily I did not go a-chirpin
    because I do not hope to turn again
    Because I do not think - beating my broad wings pitch black in the emptiness. Finding my way all the way there from here. My plucked plume tap tap on the window. And when the window opened like a horror. Becoming a raven taking wing. Perching atop a chair proud and true. Facing the mourning and the people inside. Fixing my dark orbs on their mournful eyes. With my ashy voice and my greying tongue. Because let me say I do not think so never more.
    Because I think when that door's wide wings in the emptiness pitch black opened, I was lying eyes open cold washed, as the wide wings opened, and opened they were, with a creak like a rusty laugh, I in a room soapy watery white, was lying heavy like a sealed letter, was lying when mournful fingers came and trembled over my eyelids to open and close me, the door, my lids, the
dulled black of my orbs, it was all over and done with--all of it--everything, I hadn't had time to close my eyes, my sufferance my courage my possibility, and that was why soft moist fingers were about to touch my eyelids, they were going to be closed, that door that book that lid and so I was going to turn nasty yellow, but the wind blowing through the door struck my face and their faces once, struck and blew and turned over and piled on, inside to outside, outside to inside, flinging, I mean I am flung through the door frightfully eyes open snapping free, breaking free snap! I am shot forward frothing and beating my broad wings pitch black in the emptiness straight and true for it is but a window at which I will arrive, and arrive I do, tap tap, and it was way back then that I perched high above the mourning chairs, because I do think and my shadow struck the floor blackly blackly
again, again
    because I do hope
    May April green me too, may it wrest life from whatever was once inside the bones and may
I spurt up wild, pressing and pushing through the roots guguck, propelling the others here up to
there, let me out, so I too can frisk and frolic, oyyy, let me out dark dry dire cute but out
    Because I do not think I shall ever return as April keeps poking me so
    Because I think I shall never die again
    Because I do not think the cruel force bursting blossom from dry branch will be enough for me
    Because I think we will never really shirrrp
    Because were we to shurp
    We make a nasty surp
    And stick to tongues spreading as a world stain smeared
    A handful of dust for you, a handful of ash for me but we stick
    Open your mouth and stick your tongue out so far I too can stick to it a little and green
    Come on let me stick because I do not think April shall green me
    April won't green me now would you like me to hope for another possibility
    Shall I hope for a revolution guguck
    So that that door is always open.
    That mouth of yours
    ^M00:51:26
Thank you very much.
^M00:51:27
[ Applause ]
^M00:51:39
>> Christopher Merrill: So if you were to multiply this reading by more than eight, you would have a sense of what it's like to host 34 writers for three months and have our aesthetic horizons broadened by the hour. I want to begin by asking some questions of the writers I want to begin with Harris. As you were reading your very beautiful poems, I was thinking of the line of Yeats who said that out of his corral with society he would make rhetoric, and out of his corral with himself he would make poetry about the complications of writing on political issues, which you have found ways to do it. And so I wonder if you might begin by talking about the relationship between poetry and politics and coming from a place where there are always big issues on the table.
>> Harris Khalique: Thank you, Chris. I think the simplest answer is that everything that we do is political. Not just in poetry, but any [inaudible] or anything that we write or say comes from a certain position. But it is far more complicated than just simply putting it like that. And it becomes a problem when you have to negotiate between the subject and the craft. It becomes more and more difficult in hostile situations when there is a certain amount of directness that is required of anybody who is sensitive, leave alone creative writers and artists. So that becomes a problem. And it is a problem, and I see it as a problem because there are things which you as a poet or as an artist would want to reflect upon and enjoy. And I think it was [inaudible] who said, and I'm paraphrasing, that, "I'm a hedonist trapped in an intensely political world," something to that effect. So this happens in all the artists, and so it is remains a challenge. But I think you can find ways of doing both. If your chaos within -- the chaos outside dissolves, and the chaos which is within yourself.
>> Christopher Merrill: So how do you avoid the trap of rhetoric?
>> Harris Khalique: I'm not sure if I'm able to avoid the trap of rhetoric always. I think it is up to the readers or the listeners to see whether there is art in it or not, which I think sometimes your priorities change. 
>> Christopher Merrill: When you went to read the poem "She and I", I remembered that Yeats said, "I've been trying to write political poems, and it so often happens they turn into love poems." So maybe that's one of the ways out.
>> Harris Khalique: All poetry is love poetry anyways. 
>> Christopher Merrill: Yeah. Maggie, the section you read from your novel is so deeply funny. And I think you probably wondered if we set this up by having two dog situations.
^M00:55:17 
[ Laughter ]
^M00:55:19
And for all I know, that's exactly what they did. But I wanted to ask you -- you had a very distinguished career as an essay as the nonfiction writer. If you could talk about the move from nonfiction critical writing to what's a very funny work of fiction, what that feels like.
>> Margarita Mateo Palmer: Well, I talked about that in the class at Iowa City. And for me, I always wanted to write but I thought I was not good enough. For me, being a writer was beyond my reach. So I started literature. I started working at the University of Havana, and so I started writing essays, books of essays. And once, I was writing a book of essays about the younger readers. The title is "She wrote post-criticism". And it plays with 
^M00:56:15
[ Foreign Language ]
^M00:56:23
And the lights went off. 
^M00:56:25 
[ Laughter ]
^M00:56:26
So it was a blackout. I lit a candle. And then immediately, I wrote something that afterwards became the post-prologue of that book of essays. And then I started writing fiction at the same time I was writing the essay. So new characters started to appear, new stories, situations that were dialoguing with the essay I was writing. And then afterwards, I jumped to fiction completely in that novel. And nowadays, this is the work I enjoy most; fiction writing.
>> Christopher Merrill: And do you continue to write the nonfiction?
>> Margarita Mateo Palmer: Well, I continue to writing nonfiction. And my last book combines, again, fiction and nonfiction. It's a study about the prose of an important Cuban author, Anton Arrufat, and I wrote about his work. But at the same time, I had characters that were in the book of essays, but it's also a novel on the subway -- no, underneath. Because there is a photographer that is in love with Anton. There is a bibliographer, a librarian. There are many characters that talk about Anton but in a fiction from a fiction perspective.
>> Christopher Merrill: Sounds like a perfect book for the Library of Congress, doesn't it?
^M00:57:54
[ Laughter ]
^M00:57:58
Nael, you said, "What is the tale of a nation taking shape?" And you choose to tell that tale through a love story between two dogs. And it makes me think that, given the turmoil in your part of the world, the decision to try to take on such a big subject of the shape that a nation is taking. Was the decision to tell that through the dogs, did that make it easier or did it make it harder, and how do you make a dog come to life on the page?
>> Nael Eltoukhy: Well, I spoke about the tale in a romantic way, an ironic way. In that chapter I wrote, I burrowed the most cheapest journalism style and brought it to introduce my story. But the tale was about [inaudible] and the Alexandrian people since 2006 till 2060, something like that. And it's about a neighborhood which is very, very corrupted and ruled by thugs and such things. And it is very corrupted, and there is huge chaos in that neighborhood. So when I spoke about the tale of a nation, it was in an ironic way like that. And the two dogs that scene made it their symbol of that chaos because everybody shot everybody in the end of the story. So the two dogs are the symbol of that case, that miserable situation in the neighborhood.
>> Christopher Merrill: It occurred to me that Maggie needed that bullet to take care of the dog in your story.
^M01:00:03
[ Laughter ]
^M01:00:07
So are there special difficulties to writing about a place that's in such turmoil as Egypt is these days?
>> Nael Eltoukhy: Well, the place here is Karantina. It's a real place. I knew it, and it's like slums in Alexandria. But it had been destroyed by the government in the early 2000's. Here in that book, the people tried to restore the Karantina from the beginning. So I have no research skills. I'm not a researcher. I know it. So when I tried to write about the lives in the neighborhood, I find that the easiest way is to imagine a new neighborhood based on a real one. So that's how it worked here. It's imaginary, but based on the real neighborhood, the real Karantina. And also based off many, many neighborhoods I know in Alexandria and in Cairo. I didn't feel obliged to be very real because it's all imaginary. And that's how I felt easy with the writing with imagining the neighborhood from the beginning.
>> Christopher Merrill: Birgul, I think the audience must have noted not only the poetic illusions in the story you wrote to Eliot's "Waste Land", but the highly poetic prose, the approach to telling the story. Is that a common way of proceeding among contemporary Turkish writers?
^M01:01:58 
[ Inaudible ]
^M01:01:59
Yeah. Is that a common way to tell a story in a poetic fashion?
>> Birgul Oguz: No, no, it's not. I don't think so. No. Fortunately.
^M01:02:11 
[ Laughter ]
^M01:02:14
For me, it is my reading history jumps into my writing. I always feel not only my hand but a lot of hands are writing the text that I am writing. So [inaudible] something like biting an apple. I can say this for other books I have read. So how can I take them out from my metabolism, all the apples that I ate since I began eating apples?
^M01:02:45
[ Laughter ]
^M01:02:47 
So when I'm writing, those apples are a part of my body. They also come. And for the poetic way of my prose, I can say I always try to write fiction. But it doesn't happen really. Somehow, like a root trying to go out of a pot, like a plant -- the pot is kind of cracked and the roots are outside. And I call it like a growth, like somehow poetic construction grows in my prose. And in the end, like this is the last piece, it cracks open the pot somehow. I'm really totally aware of the fact that it's not finished and it's not even a story. That's why I can't call it a story. Yeah. 
^M01:03:44
[ Laughter ]
^M01:03:47
>> Christopher Merrill: Is there a reason why the book is called "Eight and a Half Stories"? What's the half story?
>> Birgul Oguz: Yeah. The thing is this is a book which is very crafted. And older stories are connected to each other. But however, still, every story can be read independently like "A Phase of Mourning". Like let's say [inaudible] let's say "Depression". But somehow, these stories also speak to each other. But only one of them is dependent on the other stories. It cannot be itself autonomously. So that's the half there.
>> Christopher Merrill: So as you were constructing this book, were you conscious of the stories echoing each other, or was this just something that happened in the active writing?
>> Birgul Oguz: Oh, so hard to answer. I don't know why, but somehow I knew that I would write nine stories.
>> Christopher Merrill: Eight and a half.
^M01:04:50
[ Laughter ]
^M01:04:54
>> Birgul Oguz: Like I was just -- it was so symmetric for me. But I didn't know what to write. I knew the form, but I didn't know what to write. I was just mourning and going through the phases of mourning, so mourning was possible for me only through writing. And that's why I was writing, and that's why it took me a long, long time to decide whether this text belongs to me or other people also. So that's the time that I decided to publish it after I wrote it, after a long time actually. So somehow, it happened. But it wasn't a project like writing a book. I didn't write a book. I was writing pieces actually, but they connected to each other.
>> Christopher Merrill: I have a sense you probably write -- you don't write very quickly though. Is that fair to say?
>> Birgul Oguz: That is two and a half pages. I wrote it in two and a half months. But like twelve hours a day I'm working. So you can imagine you're always writing, which means you are also deleting. My hand is always active, but the art comes with it some more.
>> Christopher Merrill: Gee, we could go almost any direction. I'm going to keep asking questions. So if you're getting question ready, now is the time. Harris, you also have a career of writing nonfiction writing for the newspapers. And you said in one setting that many of the pieces you write for the newspapers have an elegiac quality. Could you talk a little bit about that, what prompts the pieces of journalism, the columns that you write?
>> Harris Khalique: Well, yes. I mean, I started off -- we have discussed that before in Iowa, that I started off writing -- I mean, I still think I am a romantic poet. I would like to think I am.
^M01:06:54
[ Laughter ]
^M01:06:55
And likewise, in theory, in prose I started writing on and commenting on a lot of other things. I mean, I had this friend, I mean only a friend could give you that liberty, who said that I can write on the [inaudible] of one of the major newspapers on anything under the sun. So I started writing about books, and started writing about people, and started commenting on things which are not my particularly my forte like the foreign policy. But, then it somehow -- what we've experienced or I have personally experienced also. But it's a larger collective experience. That in the last -- so I'll just give you an example. That in the last two years, I have lost six friends to different kinds of terrorist or extremist attacks by different kinds of groups. And these people were journalists, or human rights defenders, or just ordinary teachers or artists. In one case, an artist. And then, this is just an example, and then there are so many other events which perhaps I did not have a person lost at one level. But at another level, it had an effect. So in the last couple of years, what I saw -- I mean, I'm on a sabbatical from writing a regular column these days. But that every other column that I was writing had become an obituary. And I thought it was an obituary of an individual or it was an obituary of an event like the poem I read here, "Gulsher". So it became really heavy and difficult to continue writing. So it was important to take a break and perhaps look at things from a distance. So yeah, that has happened. So the romantic writing became elegiac writing because of the circumstance, the context, and what is happening around me, around us.
>> Christopher Merrill: Thank you. Maggie, I've been wanting to ask you, the whole residency -- there are different relations between our two countries now. So you imagine that's going to change your writing? Is it going to change the writing of your colleagues in Cuba? How is it changing your thinking these days?
>> Margarita Mateo Palmer: I think the change is very good. I don't know how it will affect writing. I don't think it will affect my writing. I write in a certain way, and I have always expressed my opinions. And I have felt myself that I have total freedom of writing. But I do not write against the government. So it's my case. I think that hostility between Cuba and the United States has been very damaging for the country, for the people.
^M01:10:07 
This crisis I talk about is the crisis of the 90's. The embargo has made a lot of harm to common people, to everyone in the country. The United States is a very big and powerful country. We are a little island in the Caribbean. And I believe that those hostilities haven't favored the freedom of expression. For example, in the press, et cetera. So I believe and I do hope that with the increasing of better relations, we can have more freedom of expression in Cuba. And I'm really happy to see that now we have embassies in the two countries.
>> Christopher Merrill: Yeah. I love the way you sneak in the details about the daughter having to go across town to find penicillin. 
>> Margarita Mateo Palmer: Yes. That has been one of the most terrible things for us because we have free health in the country, we have a lot of good doctors, but we have a lack of medicines. For example, my son is asthmatic and he sometimes sprays [inaudible] something so very important that could cost his life. And it's a medicine that we couldn't afford, we couldn't have. So I think that would be great. In fact, this novel is a novel, it's fiction, but it has a lot to do with my own life. In the 90's, I went crazy because it was such a terrible state of things with my mother and my son, both of them being asthmatics and not having the medicines for them to get cured, that I really went to the garden and started planting empty sprays of [inaudible], the empty medicines to see if some trees of medicine could grow.
^M01:12:04 
[ Laughter ]
^M01:12:05 
So I hope that that gets better.
^M01:12:08
[ Laughter ]
^M01:12:10
>> Christopher Merrill: Did you have any luck?
>> Margarita Mateo Palmer: No, I didn't have any luck.
^M01:12:13
[ Laughter ]
^M01:12:15
They took me immediately to the hospital. As soon as I was planting the empty sprays, my family said, "Oh. To the hospital." 
^M01:12:23
[ Laughter ]
^M01:12:29
>> Christopher Merrill: Are there questions in the audience?
^M01:12:30 
^M01:12:33 
Yeah?
>> James: Hi. I'd like to --
>> Christopher Merrill: Can you wait for the mic?
>> James: Sure. Thanks. Hi, I'm James. First of all, I would like to thank all of you for your readings. I'd like you to talk to how the world of international writing is changing. I am a MOOC student. And I want to thank you, Christopher, for how writers write poetry and how writers write fiction. And I can see just by the MOOCs alone that I am now in a class with people from all over the world. So when I grew up reading, I read authors that were American or maybe British. And now, I read authors from all over the world. So if you could talk about how the world of international writing is changing.
>> Christopher Merrill: Maybe I'll turn to -- Nael, do you want to talk about some of the writers who influenced you because especially since you translate from Hebrew?
>> Nael Eltoukhy: Yeah. But the problem with me, I don't think Hebrew is so international for me. Yeah, I'm going to talk about the Hebrew influence on me in the writing. I'm not an expert of the international writing all over the world, I can just speak about some very, very little things I learned about Hebrew literature for example because I'm a translator from Hebrew. And I had always, always the idea that -- since I started to write, I had always the idea that my writing shouldn't be political in any way. That was the redline, if you can see. But when I started to translate from Hebrew, it influenced me in the way that I found that new generations in Israel, especially of course the leftist ones, are not ashamed of being political. And that made a huge change in how I think about literature and politics. I remember one poem by an Israeli poet, [inaudible]. He spoke about this very specifically, and he said something like, "Like everything, literature should be dirty as the world around it. It shouldn't be very, very clean because nothing is clean around us." And that made a huge influence on me. I didn't write political literature until now, except some very, very rare examples. But now, I became more open toward the idea. I began to appreciate it. So the most thing I can tell about the new generation in Israel that influenced me, they can use the poem, which is something that was very, very shocking for me because I thought before that the poem and literature in general should be very sacred and very holy. And that told me that there's nothing about holiness in literature like everything. Like religion should interact with the wallet. Maybe in more artistic ways something like that. But nothing to be ashamed about being dirty. Something like that. So that's it about Hebrew literature and why it influenced.
>> Christopher Merrill: That makes a great headline, doesn't it? "Nothing to be ashamed of in being dirty".
^M01:16:48
[ Laughter ]
^M01:16:50
Birgul, do you want to talk about some of the apples that you've been eating as you write?
>> Birgul Oguz: Well, we say international writing it is how it's changing. It's hard for me to answer because the Turkish literature market in four years like 40 percent is translated literature, which means I think it is 3 percent.
>> Christopher Merrill: Yeah, here. In the United States, we have about 3 percent translated literature.
>> Birgul Oguz: And also UK in total I think is 3 percent.
>> Christopher Merrill: Yeah.
>> Birgul Oguz: Yeah. So for me, literature is always something international. And I remember my mother was also like that. She began reading Turkish literature when she was 35 I guess, after she just found out [inaudible] in 80's she began to read Turkish literature. So the same almost goes for me. My relationship to Turkish literature was also kind of late. And so to speak in terms of contemporary Turkish writing, I think international literature, what I call international literature, was already there. And so also my writing includes a lot of illusions to especially European classics and things like that, and also contemporary European words. Yeah. Yeah, that's the kind of question that I can't really answer because I can't compare.
>> Christopher Merrill: I should note, Orhan Pamuk the Nobel Laureate was also in the International Writing Program about -- 30 years ago now? My god. Yeah.
^M01:18:29 
[ Laughter ]
^M01:18:30 
Are there other questions? Yeah.
>> Hi. Thank you. That was wonderful. I was really struck by the imagination of your works. And I'm wondering, in your countries, what is the state of imagination? I mean, all four of your countries are going through incredible tumult right now. What is the state of people's imaginations in these countries?
>> Christopher Merrill: Wow, what a good question. Maggie, do you want to take it on?
^M01:19:00 
[ Inaudible ]
^M01:19:02 
Yeah? [Laughter].
>> Margarita Mateo Palmer: Well, in the case of my country, we have very good writers, we have very strong cultural tradition. We have a writer [inaudible] that deals with something that he calls [inaudible]. Not exactly magical realism, but very close to it. So we have very good writers in our own tradition that have dealt a lot with imagination. So for us, it's very common. And nowadays, writers keep in that line I think.
>> Christopher Merrill: Harris, do you want to --
^M01:19:41
^M01:19:46
>> Harris Khalique: Well, if you allow me to sort of digress a bit also. Imagination -- I mean, we have many languages in which we write. And there are some incredibly talented new writers. And of course, all writers also. I mean, art, literature, has a much larger sort of span compared to journalism, I mean, shelf life. So you would find a lot of writers and a lot of people who are experimenting not just with forums but also teams in many languages that we write in. But you know what we face right now in terms of new writing or writing that challenges the order, as it were, is not from the state in particular, but from the non-state actors, as you call them. And there is a kind of -- anything with imagination or what people are thinking and what people are believing in, or challenging, or pushing the boundaries, that is less of a challenge for the state for the first time in the last 60, 70 years, and more of a challenge to the artist community and the writers community from, as I said, whether it is religious extremists or other kinds of extremists. I mean, there is a wide range of different kinds of outfits. So the challenge is from a certain kind of an absolutism which wants to impose simplicity vis a vis complexity. That is the challenge that writers and artists face. And I see that writers and artists in other parts of the country also, other parts of the world facing also facing that. But it's rather sharp in Pakistan or in the region where I come from.
^M01:21:48
^M01:21:52
>> Christopher Merrill: Maybe we have time for one more question. Yeah, over here.
^M01:21:56
^M01:22:04
>> Hi. I just have a question about this notion of American readership and how the American public kind of expects a certain narrative from a country. So I'm, for example, from Columbia. And I feel like there is a general expectation of what are kinds of things that people hear about from Columbia. What are the ways of trying to combat this sort of closed-mindedness of the expectations of these narratives? 
>> Christopher Merrill: You mean that readers bring to a book they're going to read from Columbia certain expectations, is that what you're trying to say?
>> Yeah. Like I have the notion that if -- I don't know. If I'm going to buy a book about India, there's certain things that an American public sort of wants to read about.
>> Christopher Merrill: I see.
>> Something exotic or something that is from like their own imagination instead of a very, I don't know, more realist or more grounded in the reality of day-to-day life there. I don't know if my question makes any sense.
^M01:23:22
[ Laughter ]
^M01:23:23
>> Christopher Merrill: I was going to say -- I'm sure that Birgul's story upset whatever ideas you had about Turkish literature. Right?
^M01:23:29
[ Laughter ]
^M01:23:30
>> Birgul Oguz: So the thing is now in Turkey there are publishing houses and some of their writers are being published in English. And after a while, the editors work on the translation [inaudible] then the book cover comes. 
^M01:23:43
[ Laughter ]
^M01:23:47
The first thing that I [inaudible] because it has to be there somewhere like the mosque. So Aron translated Blige Karasu, Aron Aji. And this wonderful book about "The Garden of Departed Cats" translated by Aron Aji and written by Blige Karasu, a wonderful [inaudible], playing with all those language layers. And in the cover, there's a mosque.
^M01:24:12 
[ Laughter ]
^M01:24:14
Blige Karasu is even Jewish.
^M01:24:16 
[ Laughter ]
^M01:24:19
The thing is that place last year when I was going abroad, I was so afraid about some questions like, "How do you feel about a Muslim woman writer living in Turkey?" [Inaudible]. You are kind of labeled in such a way that you feel like you have to fit into it because they ask you. And also we have this the Turkish Kafka, the Turkish [inaudible].
^M01:24:50
[ Laughter ]
^M01:24:53
I think the same goes for all of us. How can you fight against it because you feel like fighting against it? I don't know.
^M01:25:04
[ Laughter ]
^M01:25:07
I really have no idea. Maybe just not mind it?
^M01:25:11
[ Laughter ]
^M01:25:12
>> Christopher Merrill: Nael, do you have something?
>> Nael Eltoukhy: Yeah. For me, but this is very personal. I was afraid about the Americans concentrate about my translation from Hebrew into Arabic in a very political way because I don't like it to be very political. I also try to translate [inaudible] and stuff. That's what I was thinking about. It went very well.
^M01:25:47
[ Laughter ]
^M01:25:51
>> Christopher Merrill: Maggie, you want to say something?
>> Margarita Mateo Palmer: No.
^M01:25:54
[ Laughter ]
^M01:25:55
>> Christopher Merrill: Harris?
>> Harris Khalique: Well, I think that there are two kinds of people in Pakistan for that. One are so self-contained and full of themselves that they do not care about what Americans, or Afghans, or British are thinking about their work because there is a very strong tradition. And there is a good side to their pros and cons. I mean, because the good side is that they're so self-contained, perhaps self-contained is the right term, that in terms of -- they're not interested in any translations. They're not interested particularly. These are the Urdu Hasil poets. So if somebody finds them and picks them up and translates or start experimenting with the form like our late poet [inaudible] that is fine. So they are fine with that. But otherwise, they do not aim for any recognition, or awards, or prizes, or the readership elsewhere somehow. I mean, it's a very strong Urdu passion tradition, Hindustani Urdu passion tradition of writing poetry. But then, there are other kinds of writers, and they are of course more contemporary writers who are interested in knowing what people in other societies and cultures think about them. But unfortunately still -- and those are most English writers. But unfortunately, they are not the representative writers from Pakistan. So it is a kind of a strange situation there. But people are very open to, going back to James' question, that they are very open to what is opening in international literature. And we have a tradition of translation, a long history of translating works from various languages into Urdu. And so people are very open rarely. I mean, there's no sort of a preference for readership. They would only read those self-contained Urdu Hasil poets. So that is how it is in Pakistan.
>> Christopher Merrill: I like the way you said that things are a little bit strange there because it seems to me that in the International Writing Program, all the writers we bring to the table are geared in some ways to make things a little bit strange for us again. And for anyone who's interested, at our website iwp.uiowa.edu you can find examples of all the 34 writers' work who were in the program this fall with bibliographies, works in translation, as well as lots of other kinds of things. And by way of closing, I want to thank the Library of Congress for making this space available to us, for giving us a chance to bring these remarkable writers to your attention. Please give them a round of applause. Thank you.
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[ Applause ]
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>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.