ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: How did Nora Gold decide the order in which to put the stories in the book?

Dr. Nora Gold is a prize-winning author and the founder and editor of the prestigious online literary journal Jewish Fiction.net, which publishes first-rate Jewish-themed fiction that was either written in English or translated into English from twenty languages, and which has readers in 140 countries.  In 2017 we spoke with her about her work and Jewish Fiction.net;  you can listen to that program here.

Dr. Gold’s latest book, which will be released on October 17, is 18: Jewish Stories Translated from 18 Languages. These are all stories or excerpts of novels by writers from a wide range of geographical and linguistic backgrounds.  While they are all Jewish-themed, the stories themselves are very varied:  some are realistic, some magical, some historical, some including folkloric themes.  The book includes biographical information about each author and also about each translator.

Dr. Gold spoke with us about the book and the unique challenges and benefits of publishing works translated from so many different languages.

You can read an excerpt of one of these stories, The Guest, by Varda Fiszbein, translated from the Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger, here.