His term as mayor ended in June 2014 and he plans to use his post-mayor years to continue writing and speaking on issues that are most important to him: freedom of speech, human rights, protecting the environment, and achieving international peace.
Now that his term as mayor is complete, he has moved to Texas as Artist-in-Residence at Rice University’s Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences in Houston. Gnarr plans to focus on writing, speaking on issues of peace and equality, and performing stand-up comedy again, though he has not ruled out a future run for president of Iceland as his popularity in Iceland continues to grow after his successful stint as mayor of the country’s largest city.
LYTTON SMITH
Lytton Smith (born 1982) is an Anglo-American poet and translator born in Galleywood, England. He later moved to New York City, where he became a founder of Blind Tiger Poetry, an organization dedicated to promoting contemporary poetry.
His most recent poetry collection is The All-Purpose Magical Tent (Nightboat Books, 2009), which was selected by Terrance Hayes for the Nightboat Books Poetry Prize in 2007, and was praised by Publishers Weekly in a starred review as “…fantastic and earthy, strange and inherited, classical and idiosyncratic, at once.” He also has a previous chapbook, Monster Theory, selected by Kevin Young for the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship in 2008. Additionally, Smith’s poetry has appeared in a number of prominent literary journals and magazines such as The Atlantic, Bateau, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Tin House, and many others.
He has taught at Columbia University, Fordham University, and Plymouth University, and is currently a professor at SUNY-Oneonta. He has translated two other novels from Icelandic: The Ambassador, by Bragi Ólafsson (Open Letter 2010) and A Child in Reindoor Woods by Kristín Ómarsdóttir (Open Letter, 2012).