Laura Maylene Walter is a writer in Cleveland. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review, The Sun, Chicago Tribune, The Master’s Review, Ninth Letter, Michigan Quarterly Review, and many other publications. She has been a Yaddo Fellow, a Tin House Scholar, and a writer-in-residence at the Chautauqua Institution and Art Omi: Writers. Laura works as a writer and editor for Cleveland Public Library, is editor-in-chief of Gordon Square Review, and blogs for the Kenyon Review.

INSIGHT

Labored Lying: On Language, Translation, and Saying Goodbye

By LAURA MAYLENE WALTER

I am immersed in words. But in a place where I don’t speak the language, all that evaporates and I am reborn as inadequate, defective.