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Renee Gladman was born in Atlanta in 1971. She received a B.A. in philosophy from Vassar College, and a Master’s in poetics from New College of California. She is the author of seven works of prose and one collection of poetry. A new novel, Morelia, and a collection of essay-fictions, Calamities, are forthcoming in 2015. Since 2005, she has operated Leon Works, an independent press for experimental prose and other thought-projects based in the sentence, making occasional forays into poetry. A 2014-15 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, she lives in Providence, RI, with the poet-ceramicist Danielle Vogel.

pages: 168

format: paperback

isbn: 978-0-9844693-2-1

publication date: November 2010

The Ravickians

Renee Gladman


buy this book
from our distributor NYRB

“Allied with the fiction of Italo Calvino, Doris Lessing, and others, The Ravickians is entertaining, thoughtful, and a quick read. As with everything published by the Dorothy Project, it’s also a lovely little book to hold in your hand.” Jeff VanderMeer

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The second volume in Gladman’s Ravickian series continues the author’s profound meditation upon translation and the ephemeral. 

The Ravickians narrates the day-long odyssey of Luswage Amini, the Great Ravickian Novelist, who journeys through the city to attend the reading of an old friend. Where the earlier volume, Event Factory, explores Ravicka from the outside, via a visitor’s attempt to understand and interpret that city’s irreducible strangeness, The Ravickians faces the problem of translation from the perspective of an insider who struggles, throughout her account, to make plain the political and personal crises of Ravickian life that she knows to be untranslatable.

The third volume in the series, Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge, is also now available, as is the fourth, Houses of Ravicka.

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Read a review at HTMLGiant, an article about the Ravicka books at Jacket2, and an interview with Gladman in BOMB.

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“Gladman’s talent for linguistic architecture makes for a supple, tight promenade through heady ideas whose appeal rests on the implicit connection it draws between a people, their language, and the shape of communication. A novel set inside a poem, the work grasps at the heart of an imaginary people, deftly illustrating their inner life and looming stagnation in little more than 150 pages.” publishers weekly

“An entire novel about a reclusive great writer trying to get to a poetry reading: OK, swoon. I wish Bolaño could have read this.” elaine bleakney, the kenyon review 

“More than a novel, The Ravickians is a kind of curated environment, one built of the culture, language, and architecture of its people, but one that recognizes as well that the reader’s perspective need not be omniscient, that the reader’s point of view can be directed, that the reader can be pulled into the fictive space and made to occupy the stage as an absence or an extra.” tom de beauchamp, the collagist   

“[The Ravicka] books are absurd and surreal, and are stabilized by an eerie interior logic: Think The Phantom Tollbooth for adults.” the atlantic

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Renee Gladman was born in Atlanta in 1971. She received a B.A. in philosophy from Vassar College, and a Master’s in poetics from New College of California. She is the author of seven works of prose and one collection of poetry. A new novel, Morelia, and a collection of essay-fictions, Calamities, are forthcoming in 2015. Since 2005, she has operated Leon Works, an independent press for experimental prose and other thought-projects based in the sentence, making occasional forays into poetry. A 2014-15 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, she lives in Providence, RI, with the poet-ceramicist Danielle Vogel.

pages: 168

format: paperback

isbn: 978-0-9844693-2-1

publication date: November 2010

 

cover art:

esperanza, 2005 (hope) by Gisela Insuaste (gouache and ink on wood, 24 in x 36 in)

Gisela Insuaste received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her BA in Anthropology & Studio Art from Dartmouth. She has participated in exhibitions and projects in venues nationwide, including Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, NJ; Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, IL; Krannert Art Museum-UIUC, Champaign, IL; and Bucket Rider Gallery and Thomas McCormick Gallery, Chicago, IL. She is the recipient of grants and awards, including a Richard Driehaus/Artadia Emerging Artist Award, Illinois Arts Council Artist Grants, and MacDowell Colony Artist Fellowships, and was recently nominated for a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Sculptors and Painters. Recent exhibitions include Satellite Gallery at the University of Texas, San Antonio, TX; Cuchifritos Gallery; and ABC No Rio, New York, NY. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. For more information, please visit her website.