August 20, 2018 — The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is pleased to announce the mentees for the fourth year of the ALTA Emerging Mentorship Program! Congratulations to our four exceptional emerging translators:

Fiona Bell (Russian Prose)
Fiona Bell is a translator and playwright from St. Petersburg, Florida. She began translating Russian poetry at Princeton, where she received a B.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures. She enjoys translating the voices of contemporary female Russian writers and is currently pursuing an MPhil degree in Modern Languages at Oxford University. Learn more about Fiona here.

Lauren Dubowski (Polish Prose)
Lauren Dubowski translates from French and Polish. Currently a DFA candidate in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at Yale School of Drama, she is an alumna of Bryn Mawr College and studied theatre at Swarthmore College. Her work has been published by European Stages, The Theatre Times, and Words without Borders. Learn more about Lauren here.

Mirgul Kali (Non-Language-Specific Prose)
Mirgul Kali began her efforts in literary translation in 2017. A native of Kazakhstan, she has lived in San Francisco Bay Area since 2005. Her translations of short stories by Kazakh writers have appeared and are forthcoming in Tupelo Quarterly and Asymptote Journal. Learn more about Mirgul here.

Jennifer Kellogg (Non-Language-Specific Poetry)
Jennifer Kellogg is the Executive Director of the Greek America Foundation. She holds a PhD in Modern Languages and Literatures from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium. She writes about and translates twentieth-century Greek modernism, mainly the poetry of George Seferis. Learn more about Jennifer here.

Mentees will present their work during a special lunchtime reading as part of ALTA41: Performance, Props, and Platforms, held October 31 – November 3, 2018, in Bloomington, IN. More information on the conference is available at www.literarytranslators.org/conference/alta41.

Mentors for the 2018-19 ALTA Mentorships are Kareem James Abu-Zeid (Non-Language-Specific Poetry), Bill Johnston (Polish prose), Madhu H. Kaza (Non-Language-Specific Prose), and Marian Schwartz (Russian prose). These mentorships are being offered by ALTA in partnership with AmazonCrossing, the Polish Cultural Institute New York, and the Russian Federation Institute of Literary Translation.

Details about the program and this year’s mentors are available at www.literarytranslators.org/awards/mentorships.