Joseph D Haske

Joseph D. Haske is a writer, critic and scholar, whose debut novel, North Dixie Highway, was released in October 2013. His fiction appears in journals such as Boulevard, Fiction International, the Texas Review, the Four-Way Review, Pleiades, and in the Chicago Tribune‘s literary supplement, Printers Row. His poetry and fiction are also featured in various anthologies as well as in French, Romanian and Canadian publications. Haske edits various literary venues, including Sleipnir and American Book Review. He is professor of English at South Texas College.

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Articles contributed by this author

JOSEPH D HASKE

Author of the novel North Dixie Highway and short fiction in Boulevard, Pleiades, and other journals

7/13/17 A Conversation with Saikat Majumdar

I spoke with Saikat Majumdar last April about his recent novel, The Firebird, in an interview for the Los Angeles Review of Books and Scroll.in. With the 2017 release of the American version of the novel, I had the pleasure of catching up with the novelist and critic again for LLNB.

Joseph Daniel Haske: What have you been up to lately? It seems like you’ve been traveling quite a bit recently. What effect does this have on your writing, if any?

Saikat Majumdar: Yes, there has been quite a bit of travel and scene-shifting in my life lately. Currently I’m in Delhi where I direct the new Creative Writing Program of a liberal arts university here, Ashoka, and teach literature, critical theory, and fiction workshops. (Continue reading)

JOSEPH D HASKE

Author of the novel North Dixie Highway and short fiction in Boulevard, Pleiades, and other journals

5/13/17 FICTION WRITERS AND TRANSLATION

American writers are often accused of literary insularity, so I’ve been doing my best lately to engage in more international, multi-lingual dialogue. Among other projects, I’ve been chipping away at a translation of a fantastic story collection by a very talented Chilean writer. Although I’ve done some translation work in the past, literary and otherwise, I haven’t taken on a project of this magnitude in quite a while, and it’s challenging to say the least. Literary translation can be time-consuming, stressful, and labor-intensive. If I translated more often, maybe I’d work more efficiently, but my current process often feels slow and laborious; I tend to obsess about all the minor details in much the same way as I fret about my own writing. Still, despite the many challenges, it’s a gratifying experience to translate terrific writing like the collection I’m working on now, and to serve as a literary ambassador, exposing readers in the English-speaking world to excellent new fiction. (Continue reading)

JOSEPH D HASKE

Author of the novel North Dixie Highway and short fiction in Boulevard, Pleiades, and other journals

A significant turning point in my writing occurred when a fiction mentor reminded me that the simple concept of originality is a critical but often overlooked key to great writing. He said, of a story I’d just finished, “Yes, it’s good, very good. Well-written. But it sounds like Proust. Problem is, thousands of competent, contemporary writers sound like Proust.” (Continue reading)