Notes from the Long Coast
On reaching the notebook
I am grateful when readers write to me, and I am often slow to answer. Part of this is the pace of the work; part of it is a small conviction that a notebook like this one is better if its author is a little harder to reach. The poyraz is a good excuse only about a fifth of the time. The rest is character.
I take on a small number of translation projects each year — primarily literary nonfiction, oral histories, family archives, and the occasional short book. The bench is full through the next Ramadan; the Şenol ferry logbooks and two small family archives are queued behind them. If we have not worked together, the most reliable path is an introduction from someone who has — a previous client, a press editor, a family whose papers I have handled before. I prefer a letter of introduction on paper, but I am not unreasonable about this.
Pieces published here may be quoted briefly with attribution. Full reprints, translations into other languages, and inclusion in anthologies require a short written agreement; these are handled on a case-by-case basis, always through an introduction. I have said yes to a handful of university course packets, and to two small literary journals. I have said no, politely, to everything else so far.
Letters from readers — corrections, memories triggered by a piece, stories of your own harbor — are the part of this practice I treasure most. They reach me, eventually, through mutual acquaintances and the long, informal network that readers of slow writing tend to share. If a piece has moved you, it will find a way to me. It has been, for fourteen issues, how every useful correction I have ever received has arrived.
I do not give interviews for promotional purposes. I do not appear on podcasts. I do not offer manuscript consultations, blurbs, or public readings at present. I do not maintain accounts on any social platform. I mention all of this not as a boast, but so that no one writes a long and hopeful message without knowing the shape of the reply.
With warmth, and with thanks for your patience,
— Ergin
On the desk, 14 Kasım: finishing a long essay on the observatory at Kandilli and its fishermen, and a book-length translation of the Şenol ferry logbooks that has taken the better part of three years. The lodos has been generous this November; I answer letters after the dawn ezan and before the second kettle.