I have always believed that literature and art have a unique power to cross borders, whether political, cultural or linguistic. That is why I am so excited to be part of The Missing Slate. With a team spread across continents, publishing work from around the world, it is a magazine that is like a dynamic global conversation. It’s a conversation that is not afraid to let in new voices, and to answer them – more than that, with its commitment to freedom of speech, which I believe is the most important ideal for literature, it actively promotes voices that would otherwise not be heard.
I find it fascinating and inspiring to see the range of work that The Missing Slate publishes. With writing from such a variety of backgrounds, it at once makes us aware of our differences and unites us as avid readers. (Which might be a cliché, but is nowhere more true than here. And there’s nothing clichéd about The Missing Slate.) That is one reason why I hope to see more work published in translation in the magazine; living in the UK, I find it frustrating to see how comparatively little world literature makes it into English, and feel we are missing out on something. The Missing Slate, I know, can change that.