About this project

The Issue

Reward Update: All reward levels now include an optional EPUB file of the issue. 

In March 2012 Words without Borders: The Online Magazine for International Literature hopes to continue our tradition of exploring global events through international writing with a special Mexican Drug War issue guest edited by Carmen Boullosa, author of Leaving Tabasco, Cleopatra Dismounts, They’re Cows, We’re Pigs and numerous yet-to-be-translated books of prose and poetry. The issue will feature 11 pieces of fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction exploring the world of a modern-day Mexico held hostage by drug lords. Rafael Perez Gay, Luis Felipe Fabre, Rafael Lemus, Yuri Herrera, Juan Villoro, Fabrizio Mejia Madrid, Magali Tercero, Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez, Hector de Mauleon, and Carmen Boullosa will delve into the personal and the global repercussions of a conflict that has killed more than 60,000 people.

 In keeping with our mission to promote cultural understanding through literature, the issue will present the human stories behind the bloodshed and struggles that have ravaged Mexico for more than a decade. To get a sense of the work we do and how this issue will come together please take a look at our May 2011 Afghanistan Issue (published, in part, with Kickstarter’s help!) and our July and August 2011 Arab Spring Issues.

The issue will be published for free online and kept in our archive in perpetuity. 

Money from Kickstarter will be used to underwrite the production costs of the issue.

The Rewards

Because the issue is published for free online we can’t offer copies as a reward, however we have several great items for our backers, including our anthologies. At the higher giving levels you will find some of these offered together. 

The WWB Shot Glass

This is a limited edition item in that we’re not making any more of these after they’re gone and that’s a shame because who doesn’t want a shot glass with a literary magazine’s logo on it!

The Notebook

It’s not a Moleskin (those are expensive) but no one can tell!

The Tote Bag

You will not need another tote bag after this tote bag.

The Anthologies:

The Wall in My Head is an exciting anthology that features fiction, essays, images, and original documents to pick up where most popular accounts of the Cold War end, and trace the path of the revolutionary spirit of 1989 from its origins to the present day. Highlights within include seminal excerpts from the work of Milan Kundera, Peter Schneider, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Vladimir Sorokin, and Victor Pelevin and new work from Peter Esterhazy, Andrzej Stasiuk, Muharem Bazdulj, Maxim Trudolubov, Dorota Maslowska,Uwe Tellkamp, Dan Sociu, David Zabransky, Christhard Laepple and a host of others.

Words without Borders: The World Through the Eyes of Writers

Featuring the work of more than 28 writers from upwards of 20 countries, Words Without Borders: The World through the Eyes of Writers transports us to the frontiers of the new literature for the twenty-first century In these pages, some of the most accomplished writers in world literature–including Edwidge Danticat, Ha Jin, Cynthia Ozick, Javier Marias, and Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka, Günter Grass,Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, and Naguib Mahfouz–have stepped forward to introduce us to dazzling literary talents virtually unknown to readers of English. Writers chosen for this anthology include Juan Forn,Ma Jian, Johan Harstad, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Gamal al-Ghitani, and Jo Kyung Ran. 

The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry

In The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry poetic visions from the 20th century are reinforced and in many ways revised. Alongside renowned masters such as Neruda, Amichai, Brodsky, and Appolinaire, there are many new discoveries—internationally celebrated poets who have rarely, if ever, been translated into English. Edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris of Words without Borders, The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry serves as a canonical touchstone in the field of poetics, bringing voices from afar to students.

Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East

This groundbreaking work spans a century of literature by the region's best writers—from the famed Arab poet Khalil Gibran to the Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk—all of them bound together not by borders and nationalities but by a common experience of colonial domination and Western imperialism. As best-selling author Reza Aslan writes, the mesmerizing prose of the Middle East—Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu—has been virtually excluded from the canon available to English readers. Featuring literature from countries as diverse as Morocco and Iran, Turkey and Pakistan, Tablet & Pen is a long-awaited work that is to be devoured as a single sustained narrative from the first page to the last.