Dorothy Potter Snyder, Author at Public Seminar

Literature

Meaty Pleasures

“In the whirlwind of hook-ups I saw every afternoon, that stitching together of Thursday after Thursday with love and desire was the essence of continuity.”

September 24, 2021 • by Mónica Lavín and Dorothy Potter Snyder

The following story, “Thursdays,” is excerpted from Meaty Pleasures, a collection of fiction by award-winning Mexican writer Mónica Lavín, translated by Dorothy Potter Snyder and published by Katakana Editores in September 2021. Meaty Pleasures is available for purchase in print or as an e-book. Thursdays I shouldn’t have done it. But I ...

North America

Blue Dreaming at the Warren Debate Watch Party

A Letter from Hillsborough

December 24, 2019 • by Dorothy Potter Snyder

I told her I wanted to find out what Warren supporters in my small town are feeling about the Senator's chances of winning the nomination and the general election. I always posit that in North Carolina, the swingiest of the swing states, if you take the temperature here in little Hillsborough, you can find ...

Blue Dreaming at the Warren Debate Watch Party

Activism

A Letter from Hillsborough

A Modern Southern Fairy Tale

August 27, 2019 • by Dorothy Potter Snyder

On the list of the endangered are people of color, women, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, refugees, children, the elderly, and the disabled. Last month, in Hillsborough, North Carolina, once upon a time was now. *** Matthew Shepherd, a gay chocolatier, qualifies for a spot on the endangered list. These are tough times ...

Interviews

Fiction For An Uncertain Era

An Interview with Idra Novey

March 25, 2019 • by Dorothy Potter Snyder

I met Idra Novey in the nineties, when I was the administrator of the arts and education organization El Taller Latinoamericano in Upper Manhattan, and she was a student at Columbia University. The fiercely brilliant young woman who was our intern has become an acclaimed poet, literary translator, and novelist, whose recent ...

Sex & Gender

Why Aren’t More Women’s Texts Translated into English?

A lack of attention from male translators, publishers and critics keeps literary fiction by women barely visible in English.

March 20, 2019 • by Dorothy Potter Snyder

In a U.S. market where over 70% of all books published in translation are by men, our compromise seemed necessary. It also felt a bit dirty. For women writers and their translators, our individual experiences of bias are supported by statistics. According to the 2017 VIDA Count, our texts compete in a ...

Race

Silent Sam Must Go

An Open Letter to University of North Carolina Chancellor Carol Folt

September 5, 2018 • by Dorothy Potter Snyder

Silent Sam is a metal statue of an armed Confederate soldier that would be artistically insignificant in almost any other context than at the front gates of North Carolina’s state university system. Here, at the flagship campus in Chapel Hill, it is at the center of a hurricane. It’s time for ...

Democracy

Just Showing Up

Trump year 1

November 30, 2017 • by Dorothy Potter Snyder

Watching Trump win the Presidency last November, I was afraid. I posted a note on our neighborhood website in Hillsborough, NC where my husband and I had been living for just six months: "Anyone want to have coffee and talk? It doesn't matter what you look like, believe, or for ...

Politics

After the Firebombing: A Letter from Hillsborough, NC

November 8, 2016 • by Dorothy Potter Snyder

When the GOP office was firebombed in the early hours of Sunday, October 16, 2016, FBI and ATF descended on Hillsborough. We are known mostly for our many famous writers and for being one of America's "coolest" small towns. "I don't think this represents the Democrats or really anybody in ...