“I began translating with the idea that it could teach me something about writing poetry,” writes W.S. MERWIN ’48 in Selected Translations (Copper Canyon Press). In this volume, he has translated into English the work of poets including Pablo Neruda, Michelangelo, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Dante Alighieri. Merwin was the U.S. poet laureate in 2010–11.
A staff writer for The New Yorker, PETER HESSLER ’92 has collected and revised 18 pieces in Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West (Harper Perennial). Written between 2000 and 2012, the stories range from an article about eating rats in South China restaurants to a profile of a small-town Colorado druggist and an essay about returning to the United States.
Lucy, the main narrator of JULIE SARKISSIAN ’05’s debut novel, Dear Lucy (Simon & Schuster), is sent to live on a farm after her mother abandons her. Lucy, who is developmentally disabled, befriends Samantha, a pregnant teenager. After Samantha’s baby is born and disappears, Lucy tries to find the child.
MICHAEL LEVI *02 examines the energy landscape in the United States in The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America’s Future (Oxford University Press). The David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, he argues for a strategy that incorporates the best opportunities in old and new energy sources. “No one energy source is a panacea,” writes Levi. “Each of [the energy sources], pursued properly, can deliver important benefits that greatly outweigh the attendant costs.”