Naja Aidt - Rock, Paper, Scissors

He is alive.

Thank you to the Danish Arts Foundation and the Danish Arts Council for their support as I was writing this book. To Leif Aidt, Søren Harbo, Naja Genet May, Line Miller, Finn E. Nielsen, and Simon Schwaner for their research assistance. To Pejk Malinovski and René Jean Jensen for their new Danish translations of Paul Celan and Walt Whitman. To K. E. Semmel for his hard work translating this book into English. To Katrine Øgaard Jensen and Asympote for publishing a portion of this book. To everyone who read and provided feedback along the way. To Kim Lykke, Mette Moestrup, Eigil Bryld, and a very special thank you to Simon Pasternak, my Danish editor, for his invaluable guidance and mental first aid.

Naja Marie Aidt was born in Greenland and raised in Copenhagen. She is the author of ten collections of poetry and three short story collections, including Baboon (Two Lines Press), which received the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize and the Danish Critics Prize for Literature. Her books have been translated into nine languages. Rock, Paper, Scissors is her first novel.

K. E. Semmel is a writer and translator whose work has appeared in the Ontario Review, Washington Post, World Literature Today, Writer’s Chronicle, Southern Review , and elsewhere. His translations include books by Karin Fossum, Erik Valeur, and Simon Fruelund.