August News

A PUBLIC SPACE BOOKS | FALL TITLES

This fall, two remarkable debut collections arrive at A Public Space Books: On Board the Dog Star by Edward McWhinney and The Sun's Point of View by Marzia Grillo, translated from the Italian by Lourdes Contreras and Julia Pelosi-Thorpe.

Across the thirteen experimental stories that constitute Marzia Grillo’s debut collection The Sun’s Point of View, real and imagined figures fight for secure understandings of a reality that is under a constant fog of instability.

Blurring memory and dream, the imagined and real, the stories in On Board the Dog Star follow a man as he wanders the streets of his youth, encounters characters from the books scattered across his floor, returns again and again to an apartment in Spain, a pensione in Rome, a train station in Marseille, and the mirage of the novel he's never written.

AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER

MASTER CLASSES

Peter Orner
Vivid Opening Scenes — Last chance to register!
Thursday, August 6, 7:00-9:00pm ET
Online
How do you begin a story in motion? In this master class, we’ll read, examine, dissect, argue about, even act out examples of vivid opening scenes of stories, ranging from James Joyce to Fernanda Melchor, William Kennedy, and more. Register here.

Jamil Jan Kochai
Building Great Sentences
Saturday, August 22, 12:00-2:00pm ET
Online
How can long sentence writing reshape our relationship to narrative altogether? Join prize-winning author Jamil Kochai for an afternoon exploring techniques and theories of sentence writing and the examples from Patrick Chamoiseau, Sandra Cisneros, and Annie Proulx. Register here.

A PUBLIC SPACE NO. 33
"pierrot conducts a change in the music as before, but soloist does not respond to the change in the music, which troubles pierrot profoundly, for he knows what's to come."—Antoine Wilson, "Once Around Briefly" (A Public Space No. 33)

A PUBLIC SPACE RETURNS TO THE SMALL PRESS FLEA

BOMB Small Press Flea
Saturday, August 15, 12:00–6:00pm (rain or shine)
Amant (316 Ten Eyck Street, Brooklyn, NY)

Join us at the 2026 BOMB Small Press Flea, an all-day market dedicated to supporting independent publishers and small presses from across the U.S. A Public Space will be selling magazines, books, and merch alongside over thirty independent publishers. Register here.

2026 WEEKEND WRITERS' RETREAT

Regular Registration Deadline: August 15

Places help us see where we are. Using maps, drawings, poems, prose fragments, and almanacs, we'll reexamine the places we see everyday and how our perception of them shapes our writing. We'll read essays and stories about the New York Harbor and the Hudson River Valley and make a short survey of Tivoli. This fall, join author Robert Sullivan at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park for a long weekend of reading and writing landscapes.

Robert is one of seven award-winning authors, playwrights, and poets who will lead writing workshops at our third annual Weekend Writers' Retreat. From October 8–11, 2026, nurture new work and enjoy bucolic views of the Hudson Valley with Jo Ann Beard, Mary-Beth Hughes, Samantha Hunt, Amitava Kumar, Sondra Loring, Han Ong, Tracy O'Neill, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Peter Trachtenberg, Ada Zhang, and more. Join us.

NEWS FROM APS FRIENDS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Ed Park
THREE TENSES (Random House)
Deborah Pease Prize recipient Ed Park assembles real and invented fragments from his days as a young, struggling writer in the nineties in his new memoir. Ed Park received the Deborah Pease Prize from A Public Space in 2025.

LaToya Watkins
THE BOOK OF CHUCK (Tiny Reparations)
2018 APS Writing Fellow LaToya Watkins investigates haunting visions of family, legacy, and. an inherited curse in her latest novel The Book of Chuck. LaToya Watkins's story "Tipping" appeared in A Public Space No. 27.

Dorthe Norse
RANGE (Graywolf)
translated from the Danish by Caroline Waight
APS contributor Dorthe Nors contends with mysteries celestial and earthly in her newest novel, which follows an astrophysics professor researching the origins of the universe. Dorthe Nors's story "In a Deer Stand" appeared in A Public Space No. 26.

PUBLIC ACCESS

This month's Public Access features stellar works of translation from the magazine's archive, made free and open to all. Translators have played a vital role introducing new and overlooked writing to A Public Space. They've translated and interpreted works by writers across histories and geographies, ranging from the mid-seventh century Arab poet Al-Shammākh to contemporary writers like Marzia Grillo. Marzia's debut story collection, The Sun's Point of View, was translated by Julia Pelosi-Thorpe and Lourdes Contreras and will be published by A Public Space Books this fall.

"The Book of Petitions" by Vénus Khoury-Ghata (APS No. 23)
translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker
We said to ourselves that you would continue to play dead by omission or
out of laziness to distinguish you from those who walk with their backs
to the city’s noise
Continue reading.

"In a Deer Stand" by Dorthe Nors (A Public Space No. 26)
translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra
It’s a question of time. Sooner or later, somebody will show up. Even dirt tracks like these can’t stay deserted forever. Continue reading.

"Ghost in Translation" by Marzia Grillo (A Public Space No. 31)
translated from the Italian by Lourdes Contreras and Julia Pelosi-Thorpe
Let’s pretend you never said Get out of my life and we still write to each other like we used to. The war is over but we never—not even from a distance—thought about rebuilding. But literature is predictable. Continue reading.

"Pita in the Arms of God" by Elena Poniatowska (A Public Space No. 23)
translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
Pita Amor met with God at an appointment they had arranged on Saturday, May 6, 2000, when she contracted pneumonia. God made her wait a little, but he finally canceled other engagements to receive her into his celestial bed on Monday, May 8 at 16:45, in the clinic of her nephew Juan Pérez Amor in Santiago Apóstol, San Jerónimo. Continue reading.

"The Poem of the Bow" by Al-Shammākh (A Public Space No. 29)
translated from the Arabic by David Larsen
Sulaymā’s trace is gone from the vale of Qaww, and from ʿĀliz.
The scrublands and rebuffing heights stand vacant [of her tribe].
For there to be friendship, some wrongs must be suffered.
To brook no wrong is to be oppressive, or be alone.
Continue reading.

ELSEWHERE

APS instructor Han Ong recently celebrated the reissue of his 2001 novel Fixer Chao (Outsider Editions), which traces the dazzling ascent and entanglements of a gay Filipino sex worker and an exiled on-the-rise author.

Join APS contributor and 2026 Deborah Pease Prize recipient Kelly Link at the first annual Dark Summer Book Fest at the Framingham Public Library on Saturday, August 8. Kelly's story "Origin Story" appeared in A Public Space No. 1.

On August 29, APS translator Stefania Heim will be reading alongside Valerie Hsiung, Cedar Sigo, Carolina Ebeid, and Jeffrey Pethybridge at Open Books: A Poem Emporium in Seattle. Stefania translated two volumes of Giorgio de Chirico's writing with A Public Space Books, Mr. Dudron and Geometry of Shadows.