Three Percent Podcast

Jeremy Tiang and Bruna Dantas Lobato get things started this episode by talking about Violent Phenomena: Essays Toward the Future of Literary Translation, a collection of essays about the art and politics of translation. That’s followed by a conversation with Makana Eyre about a piece he wrote for Now Voyager about the two translations of Ludmila Ulitskaya’s The Big Green Tent. And finally, Katrine Øgaard Jensen and Kelsi Vanada preview ALTA 49: Give and Take, taking place in Portland, OR from October 21–24.
This episode’s music is “Kick Stones (The Boys)” by Westside Cowboy.
Upcoming Open Letter Events:
Friday, September 25, 4:30pm: What French and Francophone Literature Offers the American Imagination at Albertine Books, NYC.
Saturday, October 3, 1pm: Time and Water: Film Screening and Conversation at Scandinavia House, NYC.
Tuesday, October 6, 7pm: The 2026 Icelandic Translator Triptych at Scandinavia House, NYC.
Saturday, October 10, 4pm: Icelandic Translator Triptych Celebration at Milkweed Books, Minneapolis, MN.
Saturday, October 17, 2pm: Translating Scandinavia at Scandinavia House, NYC.
Friday, October 23, 5pm: Boudoir Book Club at The Siren and the Sea, Rochester, NY.
Translator Triptych (Iceland) Bundle for $35.
As always, if you’d like to support Open Letter Books and all of its projects, you can donate here.
Subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And be sure to follow our sister podcast, the Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) for sustained, multi-week discussions centered around complicated, long books.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threepercentproblem.substack.com

On this episode, Vince Francone (A Book No One Wants) finds out that Patrick McGinley wrote more than one book, and Chad posits a Shklovskian reading of Bogmail: A Tale of Murder. Vince and Chad work through the red herrings and unexpected ending of this strange book that foregrounds some questionable wordplay (“bogmailer” for “blackmailer”), and also take time to check in on the state of literary education via this WaPo article about how reading extracts has basically the same value as reading a full book.
This episode’s music is “Bog” by Be Your Own Pet.
Upcoming Open Letter Events:
Albertine Books, NYC, 9/25, 4:30pm: What French and Francophone Literature Offers the American Imagination
Scandinavia House, NYC, 10/6, 7pm: The 2026 Icelandic Translator Triptych
Milkweed Books, Minneapolis, MN, 10/10, TBD: Icelandic Translator Triptych Celebration
Scandinavia House, NYC, 10/17, 2pm: Translating Scandinavia
The Siren and the Sea, Rochester, NY, 10/23, 5pm: Boudoir Book Club
Translator Triptych (Iceland) Bundle for $35.
As always, if you’d like to support Open Letter Books and all of its projects, you can donate here.
Subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And be sure to follow our sister podcast, the Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) for sustained, multi-week discussions centered around complicated, long books.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threepercentproblem.substack.com

On this episode, Vince Francone (A Book No One Wants, Jabber) and Chad W. Post discuss Brian Dillon’s forthcoming book, Ambivalence: An Education (NYRB/Fitzcarraldo) as part of their ongoing series of podcasts on Irish literature. (You can find earlier episodes in this series here.) They discuss how Dillon’s book hovers between memoir and criticism, and how that passion for literature was fostered within academia, then turn to the realities of 2026 and a few pieces by The Atlantic writer Rose Horowitch, especially “The End of Reading Is Here.”
Also mentioned in this podcast: Chad’s piece on an earlier article of Horowitch’s, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books,” and the start of Vince’s serialized book, Compendium of Eccentrics.
This episode’s music is “Libraries” by Yellow Ostrich.
You can subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And be sure to follow our sister podcast, the Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) for sustained, multi-week discussions centered around complicated, long books.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threepercentproblem.substack.com

On this episode, Daniel Hahn OBE joins Chad to talk about his new book, If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation. They discuss how the book foregrounds the roles creativity and interpretation play in translation, what a good companion piece it is to Hahn’s Catching Fire: A Translator’s Diary, the ways this book may bring people to both translation and Shakespeare, and the state of the field as a whole.
This episode’s music is “Kate’s Theme” by Kloyd.
You can subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Mining the Dalkey Archive (Apple, Spotify) for more book and industry talk!


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threepercentproblem.substack.com

On this episode, special guest Aryan Omar Hassan talks about Henar Press and their first publications: Gābor by Seyed Qader Hedayati, translated from the Kurdish by Chiya Parvizpur & Hourieh Maleki Qouzloo; I Am Going to Kill Somebody by Firat Ceweri, translated from the Kurdish by Jeannette Okur; and Who’s Afraid of Kurdistan?: An Anthology of Contemporary Plays, edited by Aryan himself. He also discusses the Kurdish Literary Database he built and maintains, along with discussing the element of suppression (of language, of the people) in Kurdish literature and some other common tropes, and makes a number of recommendations.
This episode’s music is “Damascus” by Gorillaz.
You can subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Mining the Dalkey Archive (Apple, Spotify) for more book and industry talk!


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threepercentproblem.substack.com