Hot Off the Press: Banipal, Words Without Borders, Three Percent

The start of the month means new magazines, new writers and pieces to discover...

Banipal 33 opens with a major 70-page feature on the life and legacy of Mahmoud Darwish. It includes articles, tributes, poems and many photographs of the great Palestinian and world poet, who passed away on Saturday 9 August following complications after major heart surgery in Houston, Texas, at the age of 67. It also includes part 3 of a series on contemporary Syrian literature, including work by Adonis, Fawaz Haddad, Hussein Bin Hamza, Gladys Matar, Khalil al-Neimi, and Ibrahim Samuel.

Words Without Borders December 2008 has an impressive line-up of writers from around the world meditating on The Home Front. All the stories are available online, and you can catch up with forum discussions about classic Yalo by Elias Khoury and about the brand-new Clash of Civilisations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio by Amara Lakhous.

Chad Post at Three Percent is gearing up for his Translations of the Year list with a tantalising catalogue of the ones that almost made it. He also flags up a great US-based magazine for writing in translation: Two Lines (from the Center for the Art of Translation), whose August 2008 issue Strange Harbors featured a focus on Turkish poetry.