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He is a Ukrainian filmmaker who was kidnapped from his house and sentenced to 20 years as a political prisoner in Russia. In Life Went on Anyway, Oleg Sentsov looks back on his life as a dissident artist. Millions of Uyghur people are currently held in concentration camps where the Han Chinese majority attempts to strip away their culture. In Uygherland, the Farthest Exile, Asmatjan Osman is the first ever poet to be translated from Uygher to English. Many of the voices Deep Vellum amplifies are by writers and languages that have been persecuted or oppressed. We're sharing styles and identities, new ways of expressing the things that bring us together as humans.” “We're not just talking to the rest of the world like we have all the right ideas. “The dialogue has to go both ways,” he explains. Will aims to bring international writers to Dallas and Dallas writers to the world. Its mission is to bring the world into conversation through literature. In 2013, Will founded Deep Vellum, a nonprofit independent publishing house and literary arts center in Dallas. “Dallas had great writers, but none of the dots were connecting between them” he says. Dallas had no literary publishing house and no independent bookstore. Incidentally, he found another gap in Dallas, one that intersected with the gap in translations. Instead of bemoaning this gap, he aimed to fill it. Not a lot of people were publishing translations. When researching where to publish his first translated work, Will learned there were few options. This idea propelled Will to pursue translation. Writing and reading are powerful acts, political acts, social acts.” But I’m more interested in the idea that is taught by Russian writers. He asks, “What do you do when you love Russian literature? Typically you go get a PhD and study Dostoevsky for the rest of your life. Will kept collaboration in mind when navigating a silo of his own interest. “I love collaborating with people,” he affirms.
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They don’t often intersect with other individuals, ideas, and schools of thought.” Will was never interested in working in a silo. Will simplifies these terms into “collaboration.” He noticed that “people generally work in silos. Duke’s program emphasized intersectionality and interdisciplinary studies. In Will’s words, “the whole world is connected through stories.” Seeking connections has not only defined Will’s career, but it has also defined, as literature is apt to do, his personhood.Īfter five years working in the music industry, Will attended graduate school at Duke University studying Russian Culture. When two or more points connect, they create something new: a constellation, a conversation, a community. Will Evans, founder and publisher at Deep Vellum, would describe Solnit’s solitudes as “individual stars in the sky.” He is interested in the meeting point, the line drawn from one star to the other.