
I'm a writer from the Balkans. Why do people assume I only know about war and tragedy?
'How many translated works are in your catalogues? How do you discover authors from outside the US? And how do you evaluate the quality of writing in languages you don't speak?'
I wasn't just curious – I was on a mission. I wanted to know what kind of work appealed to American publishers and whether mine might catch their interest. I didn't bother hiding my ambition.
One response has stayed with me, lodged in my mind like a spore. It came from a representative of one of the largest US publishing houses. After I explained where I was from, using buzzwords like 'former Yugoslavia's northern republic' and 'not a war zone at the moment', he offered this piece of advice:
'Think about stories and themes specific to your culture and the history of the place.'
'So,' I ventured, 'not a story about, say, a woman who leaves her career in finance, divorces her husband, and becomes a potter?'
'Well, if that story also explored your cultural or historical issues, then yes.'
I felt a prick of annoyance but thanked him politely and walked away. A coffee and cigarette suddenly felt essential.
In the years since, I've come to understand why his words irritated me so much. They exposed a pattern – one that still frustrates me.
For authors from the Balkans, and other European nations and countries worldwide whose history and culture are a mystery to North Americans, the road to being translated into English and published by US or British publishers often depends on meeting one unspoken condition: our work must present our region's political or cultural context, or at least draw from pivotal historic events. To succeed, it must have explanatory or illustrative value – ideally with a dash of didacticism.
'American readers need to learn about the place,' the publisher had said.
At first glance, this expectation seems benign – reasonable, even. After all, authors everywhere, including those from the Balkans, reflect on their immediate political and cultural surroundings. Literature has always been a medium for mirroring, analysing and critiquing society.
But the deeper implication of this expectation is more troubling. It rests on a tacit belief that the Balkans is a lesser place – a region forever simmering with potential for tragedy. As the publisher candidly put it: 'Tackling something culturally or historically problematic – or better, traumatic – would be of interest.'
By 'traumatic', was he imagining the atrocities of the second world war or the Yugoslav wars? Was he picturing a region mired in poverty, inequality and patriarchal traditions? Perhaps he assumed Balkan societies are uniquely prone to violence or sadness. Maybe he hoped for stories of post-socialist disillusionment, perpetuating the notion that we're still processing the 'trauma' of Yugoslav socialism.
I can't say for sure. What I do know is this: he wouldn't have been interested in a Balkan version of My Year of Rest and Relaxation. A novel about a protagonist from the Balkans who's simply exhausted by capitalism, self-absorbed, angry or morally ambiguous would fail to tick the right boxes.
Sadly for him, he probably would have glossed over the hybrid novel by Slovenian writer Nataša Kramberger, who took over a farm in Slovenian Styria, after moving back from Berlin. And I suspect he wouldn't care much for the short stories of the Croatian Luiza Bouharaoua, which paint the angst and joys of millennials, albeit in the colours of the Adriatic. Nor for the poetry of the North Macedonian poet Kalia Dimitrova, who likes to refer to Capri and Berlin but seldom to Skopje.
For a work by a Balkan author to succeed, its protagonist must be a victim – a clear and unambiguous one. Publishers prefer stories that elicit compassion, moral indignation, heartbreak or, ideally, all three.
In short, we Balkan writers are expected to approach universal themes – grief, alienation, love, loss – through a narrowly regional lens. And that lens must include a self-exoticising twist.
To be clear, the Balkans is a specific region with unique cultural, political and historical complexities. Writers from this part of the world have much to say about these, and many do so brilliantly. But if translations into English are meant to expand knowledge about 'that Balkan place', publishers must be willing to engage with stories that challenge established perceptions.
The question isn't whether Balkan writers should reflect their context. We often do, naturally. The question is whether publishers will listen to the diversity of voices emerging from the region – or if they'll keep privileging narratives that neatly reinforce their assumptions.
After all, there's much more to the Balkans than trauma, tragedy or tales tailored to teach. There are also just exceptionally written stories about women who once worked in finance, left their husbands and opened a pottery business. Some North American and UK publishers have already supported such stories fully – hence Georgi Gospodinov's International Booker award – and have thereby fulfilled the mission to bring voices from diverse corners of the world to a global audience, not as ambassadors of their geography but as storytellers in their own right. But many more have yet to do so.
Ana Schnabl is a Slovenian novelist, editor and critic
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Daily Mail
24 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
College football mascot has eye removed in major health blow ahead of new season
One of the most iconic live animal mascots in college football was forced to undergo an emergency surgery to remove its eye in a sad development ahead of the start of a new season. Texas A&M's live border collie mascot, Reveille X (better known to Aggies fans as 'Miss Rev' or 'The First Lady of Aggieland') had to get her right eye surgically removed. She had been diagnosed with glaucoma by her veterinarians after experiencing discomfort and cloudiness in her right eye. In a message on the school's website, president Mark Welsh III said the eye needed to be removed out of an abundance of caution after discovering signs of abnormal tissue. 'I'm grateful to report that Miss Rev has come through the surgery successfully, has been discharged and is resting comfortably,' Welsh said. Glaucoma does not appear to be typically common among border collies, however, the breed is prone to visual diseases such as Collie Eye Anomaly. Texas A&M's use of the Reveille mascot dates back to 1931, when the school still had in place a requirement that students join the Corps of Cadets - in line with its status as a senior military college in the United States. A group of cadets in the 'Fightin' Texas Aggie Band' were coming back from a party when they hit a small stray mutt and then snuck it onto campus. The dog barked when buglers in College Station blew for morning reveille, leading cadets to give the dog the 'Reveille' name. Despite pets being banned from the dorms, cadets fell in love with the animal and kept her anyway. Reveille X took over as the new mascot in 2021. A souped-up golf cart known as 'Rev Force One' helps transport the collie across campus. Other traditions at Texas A&M include all freshman being required to address her as 'Miss Rev, ma'am'. If she's in a class and she barks, the class is cancelled. The pooch is also the highest-ranking member of the Aggies' Corps of Cadets. Welsh said Reveille will take a brief hiatus from engagements as she recovers. 'According to her veterinary team, we can expect Miss Rev to be back to enjoying all her favorite activities -- cruising on Rev Force One, attending classes, cheering on the Aggies and keeping our campus squirrels in line -- this fall,' he said.


The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
America's new wave of hunger is here. A Maine food bank is tackling it head on
One Sunday in June, it's 20 minutes before opening time at the No Greater Love food pantry in Belfast, Maine, two hours north of Portland. A line of cars stretches down the block and curls around the corner. I lean into a car window and ask the driver if he will speak with me. 'Nah,' he says, 'I'd rather not.' 'How about you?' I ask his passenger. The younger, skinny man recoils, shrinking into the far corner of the car. 'I'm good,' he mutters, hiding his face. Maine is the most food insecure state in New England. One in seven people here are often hungry, including 50,000 children. Nationwide, 53 million people – 15% of all Americans – are food insecure, meaning they lack reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. But asking for help still makes people burn with shame. Mary Guindon gets it. Today, Guindon is 63, a grandmother, church secretary and the diplomatic assistant director of the food pantry, a woman who is somehow always busy and never flustered. Decades ago, she was a single mother working full time. Some nights, she didn't have enough food to make dinner for her kids. Finally, friends persuaded her to visit a pantry. 'Standing in that line and swallowing my pride was probably one of the worst moments of my life,' she says. Behind the two men who will not talk, I find a patron who will: another woman named Mary. This Mary, 75, leans crookedly on a walker. She smiles, a small woman with bright eyes and short, white hair. I'm reminded of a chickadee. 'I'm house cleaning,' she says, referring to her car, filled to the brim with stuff she is reorganizing. A former housekeeper, Mary lives alone in a trailer. Food prices soared 25% from 2020 to 2024. 'Chocolate chips and baking things doubled,' she says, her eyes wide. 'Bread, meat – all the basics.' You can stretch social security only so far. Mary now buys only essentials. That means losing her favorite activity. 'I just love to cook and give it away,' she says. She parked here, outside the rundown Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) hall that houses the pantry, before 8.00am – more than two and a half hours early. This is how she spends every other Sunday morning, when No Greater Love is open for a scant 90 minutes. Months ago, Mary learned the importance of getting a good place in line to get fresh vegetables and fruits before they run out. Behind her, Donna, 71, also waits. She grew up on a farm in Maine. She leans toward me and gives a conspiratorial smile. 'I used to give chewing gum to the pig,' she says. 'But one day the pig was gone. I knew where it went.' She, too, lives alone on a fixed income. 'I give people rides to make a little extra money,' she says – her own personal Uber service. She won't charge the two neighbors she has brought with her today, though. Like Mary, Donna is also hoping for good fresh produce. Today, they will be disappointed. No Greater Love's volunteers began noticing it in January: a slow but steady increase in need. The line of cars, barely visible through a dirty window in the pantry's small kitchen, stretches a little longer every time: a new family here, another elderly patron there, finally accepting that as costs climb, they can no longer keep hunger at bay by themselves. Food pantries, non-profits, and school feeding programs distributed almost 6bn meals' worth of free food in every state in the nation last year. When Congress's historic cuts to Snap (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and Medicaid take effect, that need will almost triple. Somehow, food pantries like the scrappy, all-volunteer-run No Greater Love, will need to come up with enough food. That line outside the VFW hall? It will snake down three blocks and take up who knows how many hours of waiting time. If, after 12 years of serving people like Mary and Donna, No Greater Love is able to keep its doors open at all. Tanya McGray moves cases of canned food, her hands flying in practiced motions. Nearby, Mary Guindon packs cardboard boxes two rows high on a metal dolly, piling them with corn, beans, peanut butter and elbow noodles. They try to fill each box with several meals' worth of food. They are overstocking them with canned goods today, making up for a surprise shortage of fresh produce. 'Make another row,' McGray barks. 'You sure?' Guindon says. 'Last I counted, we had 18.' She's referring to the 18 families in line outside. Before long, there will be more. As quiet and languid as it is outside, the pine-paneled hall hums with energy inside. There is a lot to do before 10.30am – before McGray, the pantry's director, can allow the first patrons in. Guindon grabs three more banana boxes. The white, yellow and blue Chiquita boxes are ubiquitous in the emergency food system, the standard luggage of the servers and the served, the charitable and the hungry. Often, these two groups are the same. I offer to help, feeling useless holding my digital recorder rather than flexing a muscle for these women. McGray is 52, 11 years younger than Guindon. Working alongside them is McGray's mother, Candy, her gray hair tied in a ponytail. She is 74, a not uncommon age for volunteers in Maine's food pantries. In fact, it's not an uncommon age for the volunteers who keep the entire nation's fragile emergency food network afloat. At least in Maine, some 75% of the state's 250 pantries are run solely by volunteers. Her long, brown hair swinging as she works, McGray waves me off. Her loud, cigarette-tainted voice is as rough as sandpaper. 'We're a well-oiled machine,' she says. 'But thanks.' There is an air of tense anticipation in this small room, lined with metal shelves crammed with canned corn, low-fat milk and soup. Like a crew setting the stage before the curtain rises, they must be completely ready when the doors open. They have less than 30 minutes. Behind them is a handful of refrigerators and freezers. One refrigerator has been broken for months. Some freezers are full of food; this week, it is leg of lamb that Guindon paid Good Shepherd, Maine's only food bank, $1.82 a case for. 'It's what we can afford,' Guindon says. The meat is coming up on its expiration date in a month. What she doesn't say is how hard something like leg of lamb can be for many patrons to cook. Some don't know how. Some only have microwaves. Others have no kitchens. McGray wears a fist-sized tattoo on her left shoulder. Her large, brown eyes, ringed with gray shadows, are framed with schoolgirl bangs. She is the third generation of her family to serve in food pantries. Forty-five years ago, her grandfather distributed government food in a Belfast parking lot. Her aunt, Cindy Ludden, has run the Jackson, Maine, food pantry for 34 years. Ludden is mentoring the fourth generation: her eight-year-old granddaughter, Scout, wants to direct a food pantry when she grows up. McGray began helping out at No Greater Love when her church founded it years ago. 'It was just something I did,' she shrugs. But when the church decided it needed to reclaim the space for other programs, McGray says, 'Then it became something I fought for.' 'I'm always fighting for the underdog,' she says. 'I do it everywhere I go. Not intentionally, it just happens.' By day, McGray drives a public school minivan for unhoused kids. By night, she is a foster mom. In April, she had an infant at home. Guindon, shorter and with a soft, round face, gray hair and glasses, fundraises and orders food. At the end of their shift, the two women, along with other volunteers, will deliver food to those who can't come in: people with physical disabilities. Those without cars. Veterans with PTSD who can't be around people. Without McGray, Guindon and a tall, rangy 57-year-old volunteer named Kenna Dufresne, No Greater Love wouldn't function. Outside this storage room, Dufresne sprints from one end of the long VFW hall to another, hefting heavy boxes into a staging area. From there, she will help move them to the 25ft-long conveyor belt that runs down the center of the hall. 'Do you work out?' I yell. She flashes a wide grin. 'This is my gym,' she yells back. If it is her gym, she is diligent about training several times a week. To keep the pantry stocked, volunteers collect unsold food from Hannaford grocery stores up to an hour away. (Last year, Hannaford donated 14m lb of food in Maine alone.) Every two weeks, Dufresne drives from store to store, slinging thousands of pounds of food a year into the pantry's van. She has been on pickup duty for nine years, ever since McGray plucked her from the pantry's patrons and put her to work. She loves it. 'It's a family,' she says. 'Even our patrons.' As rewarding as it is, the work is also physically strenuous, emotionally exhausting and logistically complex. Every political, economic and cultural problem in America shows up at a food pantry. Funding is tight. The cost of living is rising. Hunger is growing. Stigma remains enormous. Volunteers are essential, but in rural areas like this one, it can feel impossible to recruit younger helpers. Years ago, No Greater Love was open every week. 'We had to cut back to twice a month because I couldn't get volunteers,' McGray says. And that was before March, when an email arrived and everything got even harder. On 13 March, Guindon opened her computer to an email from Good Shepherd. The food bank distributes government and donated food to Maine's 600 anti-hunger organizations, including its 250 pantries. What Guindon read alarmed her. The Trump administration planned to cut more than $1bn from the federal emergency food assistance program. Almost overnight, No Greater Love would lose half to two-thirds of the food they receive, for free, from the federal government. The USDA would also end another program that helps sustain small farmers while providing local produce to food pantries. In Maine, pantries would lose up to 600,000lb of produce. No Greater Love had $5,000 in the bank. When I first visited in April, a few weeks after Good Shepherd's bombshell email, No Greater Love's menu had already shrunk. 'We used to be able to provide seven or eight meals a week,' Tanya McGray says. Now, they were down to three or four. In April, they had received 1,100lb less food than they had in March. On 22 June, they are down another 700lbs. There has not been any free meat in weeks. Luckily, the pantry still has extra donated food to offer. Guindon and I survey today's choices. Her teenage grandsons, Bentley and Liam, hover nearby. In April, these boxes were bursting with carrots, lettuce, apples, bread, almonds and crackers. Today, eight bruised apples barely cover the bottom of a box. In another, I cringe at an oozing nectarine. The day before, high winds had knocked out power to the local Hannaford. They lost much of their produce. This is the result. But then some gorgeous kale catches my eye. I spot magenta rhubarb longer than my arm. Local farms provided them. They will be a happy surprise for those at the front of the line. Bentley taps Guindon on the shoulder and points to his watch. 'Two minutes,' he says, glancing at the door. The boys preside over bags of bread and desserts. Before food began dwindling, patrons could take what they wanted from the heaping boxes I had seen in April. Now, Bentley and Liam hand it out to avoid hoarding. The doors finally open. The volunteers' quiet hum swells into a hubbub of conversation as patrons enter. I catch Mary's eye as she drops a $5 bill into a donation jar on the kitchen counter. That $5 is meaningful. No Greater Love's bank account has shrunk to $3,500, all of it allocated to rent, electricity, gas, vehicle maintenance and maybe some extra food, like the inexpensive leg of lamb. Guindon has already started on the next grant applications. The future of this food pantry and thousands like it now rests on their ability to raise private funds. For now, McGray and Guindon will put one foot in front of the other. They will send another box down the conveyor belt. They will welcome another new patron in the door. They will spend one more day fulfilling three generations' worth of persistence in the face of hunger. The doors are still open. So far.


The Guardian
11 hours ago
- The Guardian
US faces alarming firefighter shortage during peak wildfire season, data reveals
More than a quarter of firefighting positions at the United States Forest Service (USFS) remain vacant, according to internal data reviewed by the Guardian, creating staffing shortages as extreme conditions fuel dozens of blazes across the US. The data paints a dangerously different picture than the one offered by Tom Schultz, the chief of the USFS, who has repeatedly assured lawmakers and the public that the agency is fully prepared for the onslaught in fire activity expected through this year. It's already been busy. So far this year there have been more than 41,000 wildfires – nearly 31% higher than the 10-year average. 'In terms of firefighting capacity we are there,' Schultz said during a Senate committee hearing on 10 July, claiming the USFS had hit 99% of hiring goals. He repeated the claim multiple times. But staffing reports produced on 17 July show more than 5,100 positions were unfilled, more than 26%. The problem was especially grim in the Pacific north-west, a region facing extremely high fire risk this year, with a vacancy rate of 39%. The Intermountain region, the largest region with close to 34 million acres of forest lands that stretch across parts of Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho and California, has nearly 37%. The numbers also fail to capture the strain being felt in specific areas within these regions where ranks are severely thin. There are reports of USFS crews staffed with less than half of the positions once considered necessary to be fully operational. Six federal firefighters, who asked for anonymity because they are barred from speaking publicly, described how the staffing shortages had complicated crews' ability to suppress large fires and contribute to increased injuries and risks for firefighters on the ground. 'There is definitely a lot of tension in the system this season,' said a fire captain, describing how these issues have long plagued the agency. 'It's sort of like that medieval torture device that stretched people – just one more crank.' Many of the positions left unfilled are in middle management and leadership, leaving critical gaps in experience and tactical planning. 'The agency saying it is 'fully staffed' is dangerous,' a squad leader familiar with the data said. 'Maxing out 19-year-olds with no qualifications isn't the best strategy.' Vacancies at higher levels create limitations on who can be deployed in the field. 'We can't send [a crew] without supervision because it is unsafe – if they don't have a qualified supervisor that engine is parked,' said Bobbie Scopa, a retired firefighter who dedicated 45 years to the service. The empty positions also add to fatigue for firefighters who are already working in extreme weather and spending weeks at a time on fire lines with little opportunity for rest and recovery. Without back-up, those at higher levels are less able to take badly needed time off. If they get sick or injured, there's no one to take over. 'Folks are having to fill in and fill holes,' Scopa said, 'and they are going out without all the positions they need for a team.' The agency did not respond to requests for comment about the issues or questions about Schultz's claims of full staffing. But one firefighter speculated the agency may be using hiring numbers that only show whether an offer was accepted, and not if that hiring created a vacancy in another area. 'If people that are already permanent take a different job it still counts as a hiring action,' he said. 'But if the place they leave doesn't get backfilled, it just means they moved someone, not that they added someone.' Another firefighter said the agency might be exploiting the difference between 'minimum' staffing requirements and what was traditionally considered 'fully staffed'. 'You can technically play a football game with 11 people on the team,' he said. 'It would be considered negligent, maybe even abusive to the players, but they signed up to play and it's technically allowed.' The Forest Service has struggled to recruit and retain qualified firefighters in recent years, as escalating job hazards paired with low pay pushed scores of people out of the service. The exodus has exacerbated the exhaustion felt by those who remained, creating a vicious cycle at a time when the climate crisis is fueling a new era of catastrophic fire. The USFS lost nearly half of its permanent employees between 2021 and 2024 alone, leaving the agency scrambling to fill positions with less experienced recruits. The loss in experience took a toll on the workforce, several firefighters said, and the agency was left struggling to keep pace. The issue has come into sharper focus as the Trump administration continues to slash budgets and cut support staff positions, creating a new layer of challenges and plummeting morale. Firefighters and forest experts expressed deep concerns that the drastic cuts and resignation incentives offered earlier this year, which culled thousands from the agency's ranks, have left crews dangerously unprepared. Roughly 4,800 USFS workers signed on to a program offering paid administrative leave through September if they opted to resign or retire, pushed by the Trump administration as a way to rapidly shrink the federal government. While firefighters were exempt from the programs , they left significant gaps in a workforce that supports wildfire mitigation and suppression. That figure also includes 1,400 people with so-called 'red cards' who trained to join operations on the fire line if needed. The Department of Agriculture, which oversees the forest service, has tried to address the loss of employees with fire qualifications by calling for those with red cards who took early resignation or retiring offers to voluntarily return for the season and take on fire assignments until their contracts end. But when Senators questioned Schultz about the problem, he said the agency did not yet have numbers on if staffers decided to return. 'We depend on those people to help run the large fires,' Scopa said. 'Teams are not fully functional right now because we have lost so many people.' Firefighters have already been experiencing the effects of a reduced workforce firsthand. There have been reports of crews being left without power for weeks due to cut maintenance workers, paychecks being late or halved because administrative roles were left empty, or firefighters having to mow lawns or do plumbing work in addition to their other duties. 'I am hearing from firefighters who aren't getting meals because they are having problems with the contracts for the caterers because we laid off people who worked in contracting,' Scopa said. 'There was no efficiency in this – they just slashed it with an ax.' And more cuts could be coming. Schultz told lawmakers that the Trump administration's plans to eliminate multiple programs in the agency along with 'significant funding reductions in programs that remain', with greater responsibility shifted to states, private landowners, and tribes to fund emergency preparedness, management, and response. The administration is also proposing to consolidate federal firefighters into a new agency, housed under the Department of Interior – an idea that many federal firefighters support – but there are concerns that the process is being rushed and prioritized over managing emergency response during an intense summer. 'You all have trotted out another new reorganization in the middle of a very dangerous fire season,' said Ron Wyden, the Oregon senator, to Schultz during the committee meeting, warning that the lack of emergency preparation this year could cost lives. 'These infernos are not your grandfather's fires – they are bigger and they are hotter,' he said. 'We need to address this critical preparedness gap.' In Oregon, where region-wide staffing gaps are among the most acute, the governor declared a state of emergency last week to preposition resources for the threats expected from wildfire. Several blazes have already torn through the state this year, including the Cram fire, which had sprawled across more than 95,000 acres by Monday, making it the largest in the nation. Firefighters were battling 83 large blazes nationwide on 21 July, roughly two-weeks after the country's fire managers moved the country's response to 'Preparation Level 4', the second-highest designation meant to show that resources are already heavily committed. Despite his assurances to Congress that the USFS was ready for the intense fire activity, Schultz shifted tone in an internal memo sent to agency leadership last week, shared with the Guardian. 'As expected, the 2025 fire year is proving to be extremely challenging,' he wrote. Forecasts issued from the Climate Prediction Center and Predictive Services indicate the season is far from slowing. Higher than normal temperatures are predicted for much of the US through September, along with drier than normal conditions, creating high risks for big burns. 'We have reached a critical point in our national response efforts and we must make every resource available,' Schultz added. 'At times like this we know the demand for resources outpaces their availability.' Will Craft and Andrew Witherspoon contributed reporting