As this glimpse at the proofs of my versions of Leopardi’s Canti suggests, a translation, like an original poem, is never finished, only abandoned. And that remains true even after the book is published—I’ve already started collected "improvements" for a future printing. There’s usually a way to say what needs to be said more concisely, more pithily, more beautifully. That’s why I’ve found translation over the years to have been an incredible education in writing.

Heavenly Questions, Gjertrud Schnackenberg's recently published sixth book of poems, is a remarkably moving and, perhaps surprisingly, exhilarating work, given that it is an elegy for the poet's late husband, the philosopher Robert Nozick, who died in 2002. In the exchange that follows, I ask Trude to talk about some of the sources and inspirations that inform this complex and deeply beautiful book. -Jonathan Galassi, President and Publisher of FSG

We post hundreds of links on @fsg_books. Here's a look at which ones received the most clicks in the past four weeks. (Discounting our own Favorite Reads from 2011 feature, which people really, really liked.) “King of the Hyperpolyglots,” The Morning News "

Authors and Editors in Conversation Jonathan Galassi: Jamaica, this is your first novel in a decade. How has your writing changed in the intervening period and what have you been thinking about in terms of writing? Jamaica Kincaid: “This is your first novel in a decade.” There are so many strange things in that brief statement. The word “decade” is one of them; the word “novel” is another. Do you know who I am, who I really am? Well, I don’t know that, either. The first real novel I read was Jane Eyre. I was about ten years of age or so. Before that I read mostly poetry: Milton, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and the Bible, King James version, and the Concise Oxford Dictionary; also Nancy Drew mysteries and everything written by Enid Blyton. Enid Blyton was the first person I pretended to be when I was a child. After that, I wanted to be Charlotte Brontë. It’s possible my writing has gone from Enid to Charlotte. I would be so pleased if someone would say that about it. As for thinking about my writing: I do wish I could go beyond 200 pages, I do wish I would write one of those books with so many pages that no one ever finishes the reading of them, but alas, I seem unable to do this. Of course, there are many reasons not to finish reading a book, apart from the length of it.

Authors and Editors in Conversation Jonathan Galassi: Rebecca, lots of people are going to be asking, Where did this all come from? I mean: a fly. I mean: a Jew in 18th-century France becoming a fly here and now. We’re well beyond the bounds of realism here. Can you tell us what the first kernels of Jacob’s Folly were, and where you found them? Rebecca Miller: The first thing I wrote was in the spring of 2008. It was the moment where “reliable, true” Leslie Senzatimore, the volunteer fireman, is peeing on his front lawn as the moon sets. So all I had was this big, very good man peeing at dawn—and then I saw a creature above him, nestled in the sky—some kind of demon or sprite, a mischievous soul stuck as if between two harp strings in some sort of transmigration accident, laughing down at him. So I started with a human and a low-order divinity. This spirit/human dichotomy had been fascinating to me since I was a small child and used to stare and stare at my mother’s tiny Mexican earthenware chapel that contained a few people praying, a priest blessing them, and the devil laughing down at them all from the roof. For some reason this little object fascinated me and I would spend hours staring at the praying people, and then up at the laughing devil. The irony of the situation, the fact that the people had no idea the devil was there, and the mirth of the devil, was fascinating and a little terrifying to me, maybe because it implied that nothing was as it seemed. That little object opened me up to the void, the mystery behind the material world.

A conversation between Clair Wills and her editor Jonathan Galassi about Missing Persons, and how Clair blends memoir with social history to movingly explore the holes in the fabric of modern Ireland, and in her own family story. Jonathan Galassi: Clair, let's begin by...