William Maynard Hutchins
WILLIAM MAYNARD HUTCHINS, who is based in North Carolina, was educated at Berea, Yale, and the University of Chicago. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant for literary translation in 2005 - 2006 for his translation from Arabic of The Seven Veils of Seth by Ibrahim al-Koni (Garnet Publishing) and again in 2011 - 2012 for a translation of New Waw by Ibrahim al-Koni (the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas). He was the co-winner of the 2013 Saif Ghobash/Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for A Land Without Jasmine by Wajdi al-Ahdal (Garnet). He won the 2015 Prize for Prose Translation of the American Literary Translators Association for his translation of New Waw.
I always closed the door when my father entered our house, but this time I left it open as I looked for a long time at two huge pots on black iron tripods beneath which flaming pieces of wood had been placed to turn to live coals.
Yesterday, after a neighbor heard about my wretched situation, she took me to a witch she said would rid me of my husband if I paid a certain amount of money. The diviner also required me to procure handfuls of dirt from seven abandoned graves.
Jum‘a al-Dashshash knew all the dumpsters well—where they were located and what they typically contained. He had memorized all the streets and alleys and had learned what people on each were like from the refuse that accumulated in the bins and from the way residents threw trash at the dumpster.