We’re looking for writers for Usona Esperantisto. As always, contributions on almost any topic are welcome, but we’d especially like to find regular contributors for the following columns:

Interviews

Question and answer sessions with interesting Esperantists—or people somehow involved with Esperanto. The language used can be Esperanto or English (or both). Interview subjects can be long-time members of Esperanto-USA, interesting newcomers, or anyone who’s involved in a project that might be of interest to our members. Examples of previous interviews can be found on our Bulteno site under rubrikoj → intervjuo.

Book Reviews

I know for sure that we have some voracious bibliophiles among our readers. Sharing your impressions of recent Esperanto books you’ve read (either new releases or old classics) can be a great help to the community. We welcome reviews of original works in Esperanto, translations from other languages, and the occasional English-language works devoted to Esperanto.

The original literature of Esperantujo may be smaller than that of many national literatures, but it’s still far too large for any single reader to consume. Your reviews can help others decide what’s worthy of their time and attention.

Music Reviews

On average, there’s a new album in Esperanto released every few months. The most prolific publisher is the label Vinilkosmo, which makes free copies of their music available to us for review. If you’re interested in sharing your impressions with our readers, we can arrange for you to receive these new releases.

Publishing progress

Last year we announced Fenikso, a project to republish classic works that are out of print, and called for volunteers to help with proofreading. The response was incredible. Our diligent proofreading team has now plowed through seven scanned works, all of which are now approaching a state suitable for republication.

The project has also been expanded to include classic works from American Esperantists – including Sylvan Zaft’s famous Peter Jameson’s Secret Language. Ostensibly a novel for children, the story is also entertaining for adults, and provides an excellent introduction to Esperanto and its history. The scanned text has now been proofread three times, bounties have been awarded, and the newly edited and re-typeset version will soon be available for a final “smooth reading” pass. That means we need fresh volunteers to read through the text at a normal pace, just as they would any other novel. No special checking is necessary; we just need you to keep a list of any obvious typos, mangled formatting, etc. Once we’ve received enough feedback, we’ll be ready to release the final results in the form of free e-book and at-cost print editions.

If you’d like to be one of our “smooth readers”, please contact publishing at esperanto-usa dot org.