The Lontar Foundation has scheduled for release, in 2009, two volumes of literary translations with the theme “Young, Indonesian and Female.” The first volume will be published, in association with Words Without Borders, as an issue of the on-line literary that goes by the same name. Volume editors are Dedi Feldman of WWB and John McGlynn of Lontar. The second volume will be released in print, both in Indonesia and abroad, as the eighth installment of Lontar’s Menagerie series. Volume editors are John McGlynn and Dorothea Herliany.
Both volumes will contain a mixture of literary genres: short stories, poetry, essays, and (possibly) drama. As is indicated by the theme, however, editors are primarily seeking works produced by younger Indonesian women writers. Their work may relate to the theme of the volumes, tackling issues of interest to younger women, but they may also be unrelated to the theme as well and be simply of pure literary merit. Male writers are also invited to contribute but their work must relate to the theme of the volumes in order to (possibly) counterpoint issues that the women writers raise.
.:. Other guidelines governing submissions include the following:
• The work must have been written in Indonesian;
• The work may have been previously published in Indonesian but must never before have been published in English;
• The work should not have been published before 1998;
• Copyright for translation of the work is held by the author;
• Prose works—short stories and essays—should be no longer than 3,500 words;
• Unless a poem is very long, submissions of single poems are not encouraged; poets are requested to submit between 5 and 10 works.
All written contributions should be submitted to Lontar in digital form, either via email or on CD via post. Please send them by post to Dewi Andahlia, Editorial Assistant, Jl. Danau Laut Tawar No. 53, Pejompongan, Jakarta 10210 or by email to dewi_andahlia@ lontar.org. Potential contributors are requested to submit their work before 30 September 2008.
As with previous volumes in the Menagerie series, Menagerie 8: Young, Female, and Indonesian, will also contain at least one photographic essay. Both male and female photographers are invited to submit photographic essays dealing with the theme of the volume—but only one essay per photographer. A photographic essay should contain approximately 15 to 20 black and white photographs along with a story or captions describing the action that is taking place in the photographs. Photographers should submit their work in the form of a CD containing medium-resolution jpeg files. If the essay is chosen for inclusion, editors will then request high resolution scans.
For the publication of prose works contributors will be paid Rp. 1,000,000 per thousand words, capped at Rp. 1,500,000; for poetry, the same, with a minimum of Rp. 150,000 per poem. Translators will be paid the same. Photographers will receive Rp. 150,000 per photograph with a cap of Rp. 2,500,000.
.:. About the Project Partners
Literature is one of the primary avenues for encounter with other cultures and both Words Without Borders and The Lontar Foundation were established to promote the translation of literary works into English.
Words Without Borders (WWB), a not-for-profit organization based in Chicago, does this primarily through the on-line publication of its literary journal by the same name. This online magazine registers 200,000 page views a month and has an emailing list of nearly 6,000 subscribers. More information about WWB can be found at www.wordswithoutbor ders.org.
The Lontar Foundation, established in 1987, has, since its founding published more than one hundred books pertaining to Indonesian literature and culture. In the coming year, the Foundation plans to establish an on-line magazine to further promote its goal of enhancing international knowledge of Indonesian literature and culture.
