The ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program is designed to facilitate and establish a close working relationship between an experienced translator and an emerging translator on a project selected by the emerging translator. The mentorship duration is approximately one year. The emerging translator is expected to choose a project that can be completed in a year’s time, and they will only be advised on that particular project.
In addition to language-specific mentorships in Catalan, Korean (prose and poetry), and Russian, ALTA is also offering two non-language-specific mentorships this year. Meet the mentors here!
Mara Faye Lethem has translated novels from Catalan by Jaume Cabré, Albert Sánchez Piñol, Marc Pastor, Toni Sala, and Alicia Kopf, among others. Her work has been recognized by an English PEN Award and two International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award nominations.
Don Mee Choi is the author of Hardly War (Wave Books, 2016) and The Morning News is Exciting (Action Books, 2010). She also translates contemporary Korean women’s poetry. She has received a Whiting Award, Lannan Literary Fellowship, and Lucien Stryk Translation Prize.
Sora Kim-Russell is a literary translator based in Seoul. Her translations include Shin Kyung-sook’s I’ll Be Right There (Other Press, 2014), Gong Ji-young’s Our Happy Time (Short Books, 2014), Bae Suah’s Nowhere to Be Found (AmazonCrossings, 2015), and Hwang Sok-yong’s Princess Bari (Periscope, 2015).
Marian Schwartz is a freelance translator Russian classic and contemporary fiction, a
past president of the American Literary Translators Association, and the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowships and the 2014 Read Russia Prize for Contemporary Russian Literature.
Bill Johnston is Henry Remak Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University. He has published about thirty book-length translations from the Polish, including poetry, prose, and drama. His most recent translation is Tomasz Różycki’s mock epic poem Twelve Stations (Zephyr Press, 2015).
Steve Bradbury lived for many years in Taiwan, where he was Associate Professor of English at National Central University and founding editor of Full Tilt: a journal of East-Asia poetry, translation and the arts. A long-standing member of the American Literary Translators Association and recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, a National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship, and two Henry Luce Foundation Chinese Poetry & Translation Fellowships, Bradbury has published poems, translations, and essays on poetry and translation in over forty journals. His most recent book-length translation, Hsia Yü’s Salsa (Zephyr Press, 2014), was short-listed for the Lucien Stryk Prize. His previous collection, a chapbook of the poetry of Ye Mimi entitled His Days Go by the Way Her Years (Anomalous Press 2013), was a finalist for both the Lucien Stryk Prize and the Best Translated Book Award.
If you are interested in applying to be an ALTA Emerging Translator, please refer to our online portal.
