trace press

cream background with trace logo & quote from Otoniya J.Okot Bitek in River in an Ocean (trace, 2023)

Cream background with trace logo & quote from Iryn Tushabe in River in an Ocean (trace, 2023)

cream background with trace logo & quote from Lisa Ndejuru in River in an Ocean (trace, 2023).

Over the next few months we will re-introduce you to thought-provoking excerpts from our groundbreaking essay collection #riverinanocean

Today, we begin with @jobitek.bsky.social, @wordsweaver.bsky.social & Lisa Ndejuru

#smallpress
#blackhistorymonth #decolonial #translation #feminist #essay

51 casualties in an elementary girls school.

this is how they begin their wars.

Last 2 days for 15% discount!

yellow background with 3 books from trace press: Tamil Terrains, River in an Ocean & Arabic, between Love & War. 15% off Feb 23-28 for Language Advocacy Day & Freedom to Read Week.

Join us this week to read & resist all those who wish to enforce monolingualism & monoculturalism, eurocentric nationalisms, & heteronormative & regressive gendering.

Visit tracepress.org for 15% off all our books

To learn more: languageadvocacyday.org & freedomtoread.ca
#LAD26
#FTRW26

A few US customers seem to be unable to order from our (canadian) website. Not sure why that is, but we're checking... Please note that all our books can also be ordered via your favourite local indy bookstore + we especially recommend US folks to order from Open Books @workshops4gaza.bsky.social

"Finally, translation is also recognized as an act of resistance, speaking to the dislocation from homelands due to colonial actions, war, and migration, and the displacements of the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island."
- Joseph Schreiber
#Review
#TamilTerrains
#Bksky
#Poetry
#Translation

yellow background with 3 books from trace press: Tamil Terrains, River in an Ocean & Arabic, between Love & War. 15% off Feb 23-28 for Language Advocacy Day & Freedom to Read Week.

Join us this week to read & resist all those who wish to enforce monolingualism & monoculturalism, eurocentric nationalisms, & heteronormative & regressive gendering.

Visit tracepress.org for 15% off all our books

To learn more: languageadvocacyday.org & freedomtoread.ca
#LAD26
#FTRW26

(this goes for books too...)

"If the art you’re making, exhibiting, and circulating can only be supported by the people who pull us into the mud with them, is it worth it? " -
@hrag.bsky.social

"Finally, translation is also recognized as an act of resistance, speaking to the dislocation from homelands due to colonial actions, war, and migration, and the displacements of the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island."
- Joseph Schreiber
#Review
#TamilTerrains
#Bksky
#Poetry
#Translation

🌺

The landscapes that shape us, the landscapes we carry with us: Tamil Terrains, Edited by Nedra Rodrigo and Geetha Sukumaran Raging winds howl to the vakai trees as their pods tremble in fear. A land cloaked with countless peaks yet not an ounce of soul. It was this cold grim path that he, the ruler of my heart, chose ov…

The landscapes that shape us, the landscapes we carry with us: Tamil Terrains, Edited by Nedra Rodrigo and Geetha Sukumaran @tracepress.bsky.social
roughghosts.com/2026/02/05/t...

front cover of TAMIL TERRAINS with bw photo of boats (trace, 2025).

back cover of TAMIL TERRAINS with description & names of contributors. (trace, 2025)

Thanks to all who attended recent TO & online events for #TamilTerrains! An excerpt from Nedra Rodrigo's essay is up at @adimagazine.bsky.social & poems translated by Subhanya Sivajothy & Yalini Jothilingam are on @alllitupcanada.bsky.social poetry blog.

Fitting to read Carney in the context of European interwar period, when Césaire wrote "it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it"

"...we lingered on those moments where the literary text acts as an archive of a cultural, historical, or artisanal experience. To translate them with a reverence for the archive seemed to be a form of resistance against the monolithic identities we are compelled to occupy in diaspora."

To Translate is to Resist I could not enter the practice of translation feigning ignorance of the myriad ways in which translation has served as a tool of surveillance, categorization, and suppression. As much as translation h...

We're thrilled to share the essay "To Translate is to Resist" by Nedra Rodrigo, excerpted from TAMIL TERRAINS (@tracepress.bsky.social, November 2025) with artwork by Kaya Joan!

Read here: adimagazine.com/articles/to-...

The Four Colours of Blood: An Interview with Norah Alkharashi and Yasmine Haj on the Arabic Poetry of Love and War - Asymptote Blog The more we bridge our languages, the more effective our collective resistance can be.

"When contexts like our own become unfathomable to their contemporary subjects, seeking past texts can help reframe them, to offer solace through such untranslatable times, or perhaps usher in a word or two to help us understand, interpret."

- Yasmine Haj
#ArabicBetweenLoveAndWar
#translation

cover of TAMIL TERRAINS (c) trace press 2025. Bilingual title with BW photo of boats near shore.

Back cover of TAMIL TERRAINS with book description & poets & translators. (c) trace press 2025.

Thai Pongal
🌺🍚

To celebrate #TamilHistoryMonth do check out #TamilTerrains - our gorgeous community-centred bilingual collection of poems, translations & reflections that explore time, place, memory, labour & resistance.

The cover of Tamil Terrains, edited by Geetha Sukumaran and Nedra Rodrigo

For #TamilHeritageMonth, we're sharing two poems from TAMIL TERRAINS (@tracepress.bsky.social), a new collection of poems, translations, and reimagined texts that trace the journeys of Tamil language and culture through migration, colonialism, labour, and love.

alllitup.ca/two-poems-ta...

cover of TAMIL TERRAINS (c) trace press 2025. Bilingual title with BW photo of boats near shore.

Back cover of TAMIL TERRAINS with book description & poets & translators. (c) trace press 2025.

Thai Pongal
🌺🍚

To celebrate #TamilHistoryMonth do check out #TamilTerrains - our gorgeous community-centred bilingual collection of poems, translations & reflections that explore time, place, memory, labour & resistance.

Do check out our beautiful, community-centred bilingual anthology: #TamilTerrains, co-edited by Scarborough-based poet, translator & academic Geetha Sukumaran & TO-based translator, scholar & cultural curator Nedra Rodrigo. Available in all bkstores
#TamilHeritageMonth

Calling all translators of Southasian languages! Original submissions for Himal Fiction Fest 2026: Southasian Fiction in Translation are now open. Please help us to spread the word to applicants. Deadline: 1 April.

#SouthasianFiction #Translation #CallForSubmissions #SouthasianLiterature

The Four Colours of Blood: An Interview with Norah Alkharashi and Yasmine Haj on the Arabic Poetry of Love and War - Asymptote Blog The more we bridge our languages, the more effective our collective resistance can be.

"When contexts like our own become unfathomable to their contemporary subjects, seeking past texts can help reframe them, to offer solace through such untranslatable times, or perhaps usher in a word or two to help us understand, interpret."

- Yasmine Haj
#ArabicBetweenLoveAndWar
#translation

trace press trace press publishes books that illuminate, in complex, beautiful and thought-provoking ways, contemporary and historical experiences of conflict, displacement, migration, labour, love and resistance...

John, we're a TO bipoc-run press. check out our fabulous multilingual anthologies:
tracepress.org

you might love our community-centred bilingual anthology #TamilTerrains
(available via any bkstore in N.America)

The Four Colours of Blood: An Interview with Norah Alkharashi and Yasmine Haj on the Arabic Poetry of Love and War - Asymptote Blog The more we bridge our languages, the more effective our collective resistance can be.

"...we wanted to create a space where translation isn’t just a bridge but a form of companionship, between poets, readers, and the worlds they inhabit, between languages that hold memory."
Norah Alkharashi, in conversation with Yasmine Haj & Alton Melvar M. Dapanas.
#ArabicBetweenLoveAndWar

thank you for mentioning Najlaa Eltom's new collection, translated by @mayadamayadamay.bsky.social

more details soon...

A moment that changed me: in the bombed-out ruins of an apartment block, I saw a book I’d translated The sight of my work, torn and singed but still legible, made me realise the importance of translating and protecting stories – so they remain when everything else falls away

"During those nights of bombardment, I understood translation as something more than literary craft: it was an act of resistance, of staying put, of holding on."
- Amir Mehdi Hagighat.

Online Writing Month (daytime): Writing the Body | Embodied Place Writing | Arvon To be able to connect with place, it is not possible to ignore the body that carries you there, that arrives and that journeys through, however that might happen. It is impossible to ignore the human ...

Newly announced, Arvon's programme of day time online retreats - a whole month worth of Thursday's in March will bring @mailbykite.bsky.social & I into your writing room - bringing support, guidance & workshops for your wip or something new @arvonfoundation.bsky.social www.arvon.org/writing-cour...

Book cover for Bad Land by Corinna Chong (Arsenal Pulp Press): Longlisted for the Giller Prize. A slow-burning story exploring the generational effects of repression and transgression, set against the raw, eerie landscape of the badlands. https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/B/Bad-Land

Book cover for River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation edited by Nuzhat Abbas (Trace Press): What are the histories, constraints, and possibilities of language in relation to bodies, origins, land, colonialism, gender, war, displacement, desire, and migration? Contributors include Khairani Barokka, Yasmine Haj, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, Nedra Rodrigo, Suneela Mubayi, Iryn Tushabe, Gopika Jadeja, Rahat Kurd, Geetha Sukumaran, Norah Alkharashi, and Lisa Ndejuru. https://tracepress.org/collections/books/products/river-in-an-ocean-essays-on-translation

Daily(ish) #SmallPress #books Bad Land by Corinna Chong (@arsenalpulp.bsky.social) & River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation, ed. Nuzhat Abbas (@tracepress.bsky.social & contribs @mailbykite.bsky.social @wordsweaver.bsky.social @rahat.bsky.social). See alt-text. #DSPBposts 💙📚 #BookSky