James J. Conway
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jamesjconway.bsky.social
James J. Conway
@jamesjconway.bsky.social
350 followers 420 following 120 posts
Writer, translator, reformed publisher in Berlin
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James J. Conway @jamesjconway.bsky.social · Nov 18
Hi all, I’m an Australian-born writer and translator in Berlin. Uni of Toronto Press will be issuing 3 of my translations – Berlin’s Third Sex (Magnus Hirschfeld), The Beauty of the Metropolis (August Endell) and Antisemitism (Hermann Bahr) in 2025. Here’s my most recent blue sky pic (Müggelsee).
Lifeguard lookout with stairs on a lake with cloudless sky
Reposted by James J. Conway
uoftpress.bsky.social
Originally published in 1894 and now available in English for the first time, Antisemitism features a range of interviews with prominent figures across Europe, revealing attitudes towards anti-Jewish hatred during a pivotal moment.

Read more: bit.ly/4nAEJdU #History #JewishStudies #JewishHistory
November 3, 2025 at 7:22 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
A few days ago, this old, half-blind dog was so ill that when I took her to the vet, I wasn’t sure I would be bringing her home again. And now here she is, running through the forest on a beautiful autumn morning like a furry little Lazarus. ❤️
October 26, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Reposted by James J. Conway
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Berliners! Next Wednesday (15/10) at @curiousfoxbooks.bsky.social: hear @brookfiles.bsky.social talking about his new Magnus Hirschfeld bio, The Einstein of Sex, and me re my translation of Hirschfeld’s Berlin’s Third Sex, moderated by @ajbwells.bsky.social www.curiousfoxbooks.com/events
A pink information panel headed “An evening with Magnus Hirschfeld” above the book covers for The Einstein of Sex by Daniel Brook and Berlin’s Third Sex by Magnus Hirschfeld, to the left the details “15 October/20:00/Doors 19:39/Free entry”, to the right “with Daniel Brook & James J. Conway in conversation with Alexander Wells”
October 8, 2025 at 10:10 AM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Berliners! Next Wednesday (15/10) at @curiousfoxbooks.bsky.social: hear @brookfiles.bsky.social talking about his new Magnus Hirschfeld bio, The Einstein of Sex, and me re my translation of Hirschfeld’s Berlin’s Third Sex, moderated by @ajbwells.bsky.social www.curiousfoxbooks.com/events
A pink information panel headed “An evening with Magnus Hirschfeld” above the book covers for The Einstein of Sex by Daniel Brook and Berlin’s Third Sex by Magnus Hirschfeld, to the left the details “15 October/20:00/Doors 19:39/Free entry”, to the right “with Daniel Brook & James J. Conway in conversation with Alexander Wells”
October 8, 2025 at 10:10 AM
Reposted by James J. Conway
berlitak.bsky.social
October 4, 2025 at 9:49 AM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Monte Verità, looking down on Ascona and Lago Maggiore.
A mountaintop with fir trees to the left and right of the frame, in the top left a dramatic sun casting rays onto the lake below, with buildings just visible on the far shore.
October 3, 2025 at 2:12 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
You know the feeling: you’re on a train deep in the Gotthard Tunnel but you MUST have risotto rice. Swiss railways got ya covered.
October 1, 2025 at 12:24 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
#normalforbrandenburg
Red sign in a planted bed reading "Schön aber giftig/Bitte nicht berühren!" (Beautiful but poisonous/Please don't touch!) Hedge cut in the shape of leering lantern-jawed ogre with a lawn, yellow house with shutters and partly cloudy daytime sky behind
August 27, 2025 at 1:38 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
It was closing time at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart but this caught my eye on the way to the exit. “Magic Scene” 1740/1 by Andrea Locatelli – a macabre, occult scenario that really rewards close examination (death has not halted the hanged man’s indignities...). Fantastic custom frame, too.
Against a mulberry coloured wall, a carved silver-plated frame in portrait format topped by an owl on a stack of books within a pediment, with plants and flowers at the bottom left and right. The oil painting within the frame shows a sorcerer in a blue cloak reading from a book on the ground, tracing a sigil into the dirt within a gloomy half-ruined building, with columns holding up a vaulting ceiling, although one column is broken and topped by plant life. Around him are presumably the apparitions he has summoned. In the foreground is the skeleton of a dog, still standing, alongside broken jugs, and the skeleton of a man lying down. Above the broken column is a man hanged in a noose from a beam; a cat standing on the beam is defecating on the dead man’s head. Also hanging from the beam are monkey, and an owl watches from a perch attached to a column. Above the sorcerer a naked man is riding a flying goat through a hole in the wall toward the moonlight, behind the sorcerer we see demons, bats, a naked woman and flying snakes emerging from the pits of hell.
August 14, 2025 at 1:28 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
@brynstole.bsky.social‬ in The Berliner on August Endell’s The Beauty of the Metropolis (trans. me, pub. ‪@uoftpress.bsky.social‬): “a meditation on aesthetics, shot through with musings and engaged in turn-of-the-century debates”
www.the-berliner.com/books/the-be...
The Beauty of the Metropolis: August Endell in praise of the unpretty city - The Berliner
August Endell’s The Beauty of the Metropolis, newly translated by James J. Conway, finds unexpected wonder in Wilhelmine Berlin’s smoke, steel, and bustle.
www.the-berliner.com
August 4, 2025 at 3:14 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Me: I’ve got a package coming today.
Husband (hopefully): Is it negative books?
An open box showing a book with the title "Die Lebensreform/Entwürfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst um 1900" in green against an oil painting showing a naked young man flanked by a bare-breasted young woman with long auburn hair and green cloth blown by the wind and a blue skirt, and a dark-haired woman with an orange top and red skirt with her head turned away. They look to be striding into a better future.
July 9, 2025 at 12:59 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
@johncoulthart.com, I saw one of these in the wild* and thought of you.
* the Stefan George Museum in Bingen, which was actually pretty wild. Lots of Melchior Lechter designs.
In a curved glass case, a book in a Jugendstill design with the title MAXIMIN in gold within a gold design with thin vertical lines, a triangle and flame-like motifs against an ivory-coloured background. To the right of the book, a label: "'Maximin'/Ein Gedenkbuch/Herausgegeben von/Stefan George/Berlin 1907"
July 1, 2025 at 12:56 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
I may have found the most bizarre structure in Germany! Even the journey there is weird. Starting out from Mannheim, the grid city that has blocks with Battleship coordinates rather than street names, you catch a tram which crosses the Rhine to Ludwigshafen …
On a corner, two street signs in blue enamel with white text announcing this block in Mannheim as “N7”. Below it is a pedestrian traffic light on red, above it a sign saying “BÄCKER”.
July 1, 2025 at 12:27 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Toys at the Bauhaus Museum, Weimar, including spinning tops designed by Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, one of the original Bauhaus Weimar cohort who later emigrated to Australia and became an art teacher, where his pupils included my Dad.
Stringed puppet figure with a dark red spherical torso, bulbous pink thighs and orange upper arms, stick forearms and lower legs, black hair with eyes agog, against a pick background Toy figures in a cabinet; a conical black-clad figure in the foreground, a spherical figure out of focus further away against a green and yellow background Looking down on a glass-covered display case with a dusty pink base, showing three children’s spinning tops with patterned discs, one evenly divided between black and white, another with wedges of red, purple, blue, black, yellow and orange, and the third with uneven concentric circles of white, yellow, red, blue and black.
June 11, 2025 at 11:32 AM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
*Jan Brady voice* Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Nietzsche!
Selection of busts and statuettes of Friedrich Nietzsche in a museum on stepped black pedestals. Close to the viewer, a standing statuette in grey plaster, behind out of focus largely white busts. White plaster statuette of the infirm Friedrich Nietzsche in an armchair with a blanket over his legs Close up of Friedrich Nietzsche's death mask in grey/white plaster Yellow rubber überduckie styled as Friedrich Nietzsche, with bushy eyebrows and moustache.
June 5, 2025 at 1:07 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Erfurt is for lovers
Narrow canal with railing from which hang potted flowers, beyond a restaurant overlooking the water; trees and greenery on the left side of the image with a brooding cloudy sky beyond. Two half-timbered cream houses with sage window frames with trees either side overlooking a canal with a footbridge of stone steps and wooden boards. Covered medieval bridge in the evening with four-storey buildings overlooking the water below Cheese board with a heart-shaped bun and a butter pot with a pink daisy
June 5, 2025 at 12:39 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Receiving fresh copies of a book you’ve worked on – it never gets tired. Berlin‘s Third Sex by Magnus Hirschfeld, published by @uoftpress.bsky.social
Cardboard box open to reveal two stacks of the same book. The cover of the book has a backdrop the colour of a green carnation, with two colourised photos showing the same individual in two different exposures, one in masculine-coded clothing from the early 20th century, and one in feminine-coded clothing. On the left the individual is wearing a suit coloured mid-blue with a white starched collar and purple tie and waistcoat and a black hat. On the right the individual is wearing a pink overcoat with wide sleeves over a light-blue blouse and a purple skirt, as well as a purple broad-brimmed hat with a blue ribbon. The text at the top reads MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD/Translated and with an afterword by James J. Conway/BERLIN’S THIRD SEX
May 30, 2025 at 2:06 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Berlin, Saturday. Outside: meh. Inside: unfiltered sunshine from the other end of the world as Australian & New Zealand writing folk freely share their work and their thoughts in an all-day symposium. Looking forward to it!
May 23, 2025 at 9:25 AM
Reposted by James J. Conway
ajbwells.bsky.social
This legend's book launch is at Lettrétage tonight >>

www.the-berliner.com/books/gabrie...
Spectral analysis: Gabriel Flynn's gentrified ghouls - The Berliner
The struggling characters in the Berlin-based author's debut novel 'Poor Ghost!' are as haunted by their austere past as they are wary of Manchester's foreclosed future.
www.the-berliner.com
May 21, 2025 at 8:57 AM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Edwardian eccentric, defrocked priest and fantasy league pope Baron Corvo was getting up to this kind of nonsense 120 years ago strangeflowers.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/p...
May 20, 2025 at 6:41 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
TIL there is an online map of *every single tree in Berlin*! I see this tree on my dog walks and I always loved it but I had no idea what it was. Turns out it is a Dreidorniger Lederhülsenbaum, or honey locust (how is that not a shoegaze band?). experience.arcgis.com/experience/7...
A yellow-green tree with a pleasingly rounded crown amid other trees, including conifers, against cloudy sky.
May 17, 2025 at 3:24 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Next week! A whole day dedicated to Aus/NZ literature in Berlin. I'm looking forward to some great panel discussions with others who have wandered far from home. stadtsprachen.de/de/event/par...
May 16, 2025 at 2:00 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
It was on this day that Magnus Hirschfeld was born (1868) and died (1935), so it’s a good time to tell you my translation of his utterly groundbreaking 1904 study of sexuality and gender, “Berlin’s Third Sex”, has just been reissued by @uoftpress.bsky.social. This is also good timing because … 🧵
A book cover with a backdrop the colour of a green carnation, with two colourised photos showing an individual in two different exposures, one in masculine-coded clothing from the early 20th century, and one in feminine-coded clothing. On the left the individual is wearing a suit coloured mid-blue with a white starched collar and purple tie and waistcoat and a black hat. On the right the individual is wearing a pink overcoat with wide sleeves over a light-blue blouse and a purple skirt, as well as a purple broad-brimmed hat with a blue ribbon. The text at the top reads MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD/Translated and with an afterword by James J. Conway/BERLIN’S THIRD SEX The cover of the book Berlin’s Third Sex by Magnus Hirschfeld with the original German title in old script enclosed by a wild cat with a garland below it in green and black, all against a pink-beige background.
May 14, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Reposted by James J. Conway
bschillace.brandyschillace.com
LAUNCH DAY!
THE INTERMEDIARIES weaves together 3 stories: A history of science and the discovery of hormones, a #history of political machinations + how Nazi weaponized hate and fear, and best of all, a history of #trans woman Dora Richter and others like her who lived lives of joy and resistance.
The Intermediaries: A Weimar Story
A Weimar Story
bookshop.org
May 13, 2025 at 1:06 PM
jamesjconway.bsky.social
Artist Ilna Ewers-Wunderwald was born 150 years ago today. She provided illustrations for a number of husband Hanns Heinz Ewers's books; the scandalous pair were the ultimate bohemian duo of Wilhelmine Germany. In 2021 I was lucky enough to translate a bio of Ilna E-W www.zagava.de/shop/the-art...
Sepia photograph of a smiling dark-haired woman who appears to be sitting on a pebbly beach in a dark hat and light-coloured early 20th century dress with ruffles, showing her bloomers bare legs with dark socks underneath Highly detailed colour drawing of an owl against a dark outdoor scene with a hint of silvery light on the horizon Book cover featuring an illustration of a chameleon with hand-lettered text against a red field: Alraune/die Geschichte eines lebenden Wesens/Roman/von/Hanns Heinz Ewers Highly detailed drawing of a green and red parrot with its head cocked backwards against an indeterminate brown/beige background
May 7, 2025 at 5:42 PM