Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún
@kolatubosun.bsky.social
Writer and linguist. Co-editor "Best Literary Translations." Watch "Ebrohimie Road" at https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ebrohimieroad
In case you missed it last week, @kolatubosun.bsky.social on neologisms in Yorùbá. Includes #OED content! #dictionary flaminghydra.com/fat-coke-bot...
Fat Coke Bottles and Other Inventions
Slightly over a decade ago, I heard the Yorùbá word “jápa” for the first time. It’s always a bit jarring to hear a new word spoken in one’s native language. Sometimes it’s an archaic word, or one...
flaminghydra.com
TODAY: @kolatubosun.bsky.social on new words, new slang, and new ways of understanding in Nigeria. “Yet language, as often is the case, kept moving on, acquiring the new shapes, sizes, and delights thrown its way by dynamic use.” flaminghydra.com/fat-coke-bot...
Fat Coke Bottles and Other Inventions
Slightly over a decade ago, I heard the Yorùbá word “jápa” for the first time. It’s always a bit jarring to hear a new word spoken in one’s native language. Sometimes it’s an archaic word, or one...
flaminghydra.com
Translating and Publishing World Literature www.pw.org/content/tran...
ALSO TODAY: @kolatubosun.bsky.social on the politics of publishing and language access. “It was just last year that Nigeria announced a new policy cancelling mother tongue teaching in schools and reverting to English.” flaminghydra.com/proof-of-lif...
Proof of Life: A Summer of Language Work
I was recently in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for the International Publishers Congress, an event organized every two years to discuss the publishing industry and its continued evolution. I’d never been...
flaminghydra.com
WHAT happened when @kolatubosun.bsky.social, innocently mowing his lawn, came face to face with a beast in the garden. flaminghydra.com/issue-595/
Serpent subdued
Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún vs. Nature
flaminghydra.com
TODAY: @kolatubosun.bsky.social encounters the garter snake. “It was a battle between what I feared was something truly sinister, and my likely future guilt at having wasted lethality on something quite undeserving.” flaminghydra.com/r/ad6eada0?m...
Serpent subdued
Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún vs. Nature
flaminghydra.com
How people sent emails at cybercafes in Nigeria in the 1990s ... and why Taiwan wants to bring back spanking for internet crimes ... two brilliant, funny stories, by @kolatubosun.bsky.social and @brianhioe.bsky.social respectively. Only on @flaminghydra.com flaminghydra.com/issue-584/
Cyber seer / Cane scrutiny
Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún on ‘Being Digital’; Brian Hioe on the possibility of corporal punishment in Taiwan
flaminghydra.com
TODAY: @kolatubosun.bsky.social on an eerily prophetic 1995 book. "We will witness the loss of many jobs to wholly automated systems, which will soon change the white-collar workplace to the same degree that it has already transformed the factory floor." flaminghydra.com/internet-pro...
Internet Prophet of 1995
a fiery writer-owned cooperative
flaminghydra.com
Translation Conversations with Wendy Call. youtu.be/GWbyYnpHhv0
Conversation with Wendy Call.
YouTube video by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún
youtu.be
The Childlike Daring of Ọlábísí Àjàlá, Global Citizen, by Darlington Chibueze Anuonye worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/book-re...
The Childlike Daring of Ọlábísí Àjàlá, Global Citizen, by Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye reviews the new edition of Olabisi Ajala’s classic 1962 travelogue, An African Abroad.
worldliteraturetoday.org
TOMORROW: Translating and Publishing World Literature: Editors’ Roundtable to Feature U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, by The Editors of WLT worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/news-an...
Translating and Publishing World Literature: Editors’ Roundtable to Feature U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, by The Editors of WLT
On Tuesday, May 12, join U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, Noh Anothai, Wendy Call, Kola Tubosun, and Daniel Simon for a Zoom conversation about the urgency of literary translation.
worldliteraturetoday.org
Translating and Publishing World Literature: Editors’ Roundtable to Feature U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, by The Editors of WLT worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/news-an...
Translating and Publishing World Literature: Editors’ Roundtable to Feature U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, by The Editors of WLT
On Tuesday, May 12, join U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, Noh Anothai, Wendy Call, Kola Tubosun, and Daniel Simon for a Zoom conversation about the urgency of literary translation.
worldliteraturetoday.org
The immediate danger is not that machines will act without human oversight; it is that human overseers have no idea what the machines are actually “thinking.” The Pentagon’s guidelines are fundamentally flawed because they rest on the dangerous assumption that humans understand how AI systems work.
Why having “humans in the loop” in an AI war is an illusion
We don't really understand AI's inner workings, so we're effectively flying blind.
technologyreview.com
Translating and Publishing World Literature: Editors’ Roundtable to Feature U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, by The Editors of WLT worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/news-an...
Translating and Publishing World Literature: Editors’ Roundtable to Feature U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, by The Editors of WLT
On Tuesday, May 12, join U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, Noh Anothai, Wendy Call, Kola Tubosun, and Daniel Simon for a Zoom conversation about the urgency of literary translation.
worldliteraturetoday.org
A glorious Hydra today has haunting stories by @lukeoneil47.bsky.social, a dreamy meditation on the life of David Jowitt, author of 'Nigerian English Usage', by @kolatubosun.bsky.social, and @joemacleod666.bsky.social on the Beastie Boys and Blue Nun Liebfraumilch flaminghydra.com/issue-520/
Naturalized Nigerian / Unnatural tracks
Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún on an English scholar in Nigeria; new works from Luke O’Neil
flaminghydra.com
ALSO TODAY: @kolatubosun.bsky.social on the role of African forests in storytelling. “African novels have set revelatory scenes, important plot events and sometimes whole stories in the forest.” flaminghydra.com/african-fore...
African Forests Transformed
I’ve just finished reading Ainehi Edoro’s Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think, published last month by Columbia University Press. Edoro, the publisher of Brittle Paper—an important platform f...
flaminghydra.com
Flaming Hydra @flaminghydra.com is a cooperative of writers and artists publishing what interests them freely. One or two big stories each weekday, features, criticism, interviews, comics, you name it. A weekly Hydranym game. Our new News On Fire column. Partial list of our contributors:
Excited to share that my translation of Wong Yi's 黃怡 "Overseas Bride" has been selected for BEST LITERARY TRANSLATIONS 2026. This is a timely story about the losses involved in immigration, esp. language, & is a love letter to Cantonese. Congrats to all the translators & thank you to the editors!
Deep Vellum@deepvellum.bsky.social · 8mo agoBEST LITERARY TRANSLATIONS 2026 is available for preorder! Guest edited by National Book Award winner Arthur Sze, BLT 2026 is compiled from over 450 submissions written in 62 original languages and features poetry and prose written in languages both widely spoken and critically endangered.
This anthology is now available for pre-order from @deepvellum.bsky.social. Huge thanks to the editors and the publishers of literature in translation for your support! I'm thrilled that this poem by Olga Bragina will now have even more reach. Please buy the book & ask your library to carry it!
![A spread from the book displayed on the background of mossy bricks
[Out in the street the air smells of smoke]
Olga Bragina
Translated from the Russian by Olga Zilberbourg](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:arqwufxfd2v3sqp5k2ag5cu5/bafkreicok37lgzt3haxbavk4bpvjouraoz3rhsgct7jjla6gfwpwtheq24)
Honored to be included in BEST LITERARY TRANSLATIONS 2026, guest-edited by U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, to be published by @deepvellum.bsky.social on 4/14. Thanks to @koimolove.bsky.social for writing the beautiful story; thanks to @commonmag.bsky.social for publishing it and nominating it to BLT.
Nigerian-born scholar, translator and documentarian @kolatubosun.bsky.social moved to Minneapolis with his family in 2022, little imagining the kind of U.S.A. he would be bringing his children into. Rich, sobering essay about how the world is changing under our feet. flaminghydra.com/issue-485/
ALSO TODAY: @kolatubosun.bsky.social sits at a literary festival thousands of miles away and thinks of Minneapolis. "Every time I have tried to write about what is going on in America today, it overwhelms me in a way that prevents a true emotional reckoning." flaminghydra.com/recurring-ni...
Recurring Nightmare
It is 8:25 a.m. in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. I have been here for a week at the Festival of African Literature, sophomore edition, organized by the Sharjah Book Authority, a government entity als...
flaminghydra.com
We are excited to open applications for a UK-based Translator in Residence working with/in Endangered Languages. Find full details, including fee and residency requirements, below. Application deadline: 15 February, 2026 buff.ly/yibsATf
Call for Submissions: Best Literary Translations 2027 (to be guest-edited by Emily Wilson. Deadline: January 9, 2026. Please share. www.deepvellum.org/news/blt2027...
Call for Submissions: Best Literary Translations 2027 — Deep Vellum
Call for Submissions: Best Literary Translations 2027 Deep Vellum is accepting nominations for the fourth edition of our celebrated anthology, Best Literary Translations . We are honored to show...
deepvellum.org
