An interview with me appeared today at Strange Horizons. It is entitled Noticing Language, and it is about language, linguistics, my novel, poetry, emerging poets, and various other things.

A few comments I wanted to add to the interview:

Rose Lemberg lived in Ukraine, subarctic Russia, and Israel before relocating to Berkeley for her Ph.D. She is now living and teaching in the Midwest, where she finally became an immigrant in 2010. She is relieved to be a resident, rather than a nonresident, alien.

I wrote this bio before the events at Boston, and I have since had the (dis)pleasure to travel by plane for a conference. I had the urge to change the bio after that experience, but I left it in. It is important for me to talk about this.

I recently had a chance to ask my students whether they view language as a “primary component of identity,” a phrase we’ve found in an article. Many said no.

To follow up, I asked my students what they would consider a primary component of identity. Many immediately said “gender.” I then asked how often they reflected on their gender. The discussion further developed along these lines; I thought it might be worth discussing/mentioning here.

I also note that answers would vary depending on the context. Students at my university are different demographically from the ones I had at Berkeley.

Yet, language is central to identity. For many monolinguals, especially those who speak the standard vernaculars, language is not something one notices in daily life

The issue of standard vernaculars is very interesting; do you want to discuss diglossic situations and language hegemony, or should we wait until Readercon?

Speaking about languages and translations, Seven Losses of Na Re has been translated into Spanish! This is the first time my story is translated – very exciting. Thank you, Marcheto!