Translation-Related Events

Collaborative Translation: Creativity & Praxis, Sponsored by ALTA

Moderator: Cynthia Hogue, Presenters: Katie Farris, Mary Jo Bang, Nancy Naomi Carlson, Khaled Mattawa

Room 314, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

This panel takes as its premise that literary translation is inherently collaborative. Four prolific and prizewinning collaborative translators, working in such languages as French, Latin, Ukrainian, and Spanish, will discuss how collaboration has affected their practice. In addition, they will explore a spectrum of specific practices and collaborative experiences in their work.

Craft Lessons from Yiddish Poetry

Moderator: Daniel Kraft, Presenters: Pearl Abraham, Yerra Sugarman, Zackary Sholem Berger, Kathryn Hellerstein

Room 327, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Modern Yiddish poetry is one of the most dynamic, daring, and complex bodies of global literature from the twentieth century. Its diasporic perspectives, formal experiments, and ambivalent relationships to its own history offer timely models for poets writing in all languages. Our panelists, all translators and poets, will discuss some of the lessons in poetic craft they have learned from their apprenticeships to great Yiddish poets, in ways accessible to writers without knowledge of Yiddish.

Born-Digital Poetry: Planning for the Future of Literary Archives

Moderator: Nadia Ghasedi,  Presenters: Aditi Machado, Adrian Matejka, Niki Herd, Julie Swarstad Johnson

Room 315, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

This panel brings together poets, translators, editors, scholars, and archivists to explore what it means to create, collect, and preserve born-digital poetry. Drawing on the Mellon-funded Born-Digital Poetry project, it addresses the challenges of creation in the digital environment and the urgency of preventing future loss, offering insights on creative process in the digital era, personal curation, ethical considerations, and strategies to protect literary archives for future generations.

Shaping the Narrative: African Literature for a Global Audience

Moderator: Adedayo Agarau, Presenters: Mubanga Kalimamukwento, Tramaine Suubi, Romeo Oriogun

Room 323, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

African literature is surging onto global prize lists and bestseller charts, yet fresh visibility brings hard choices. This conversation examines how contemporary African writers honor local textures while engaging readers worldwide, how stories shift in translation—of language and of life—and how author-led magazines and prizes guard against commodified “Africa.” Through this event, attendees join the conversations about sustaining authenticity amid borderless readerships.

On Our Own Terms: First-Generation Immigrants Writing About Asia

Moderator: Shubha Sunder, Presenters: M Lin, Grace Liew, Dur E Aziz Amna, Yu-Mei Balasingamchow

Room 323, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Writers from China, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Singapore share how their perspectives as first-generation Asian immigrants inform their novels, short stories, and poetry. How do they write about home and diaspora, especially when some cultures and political worlds are very different from the US? Which stories “travel well,” and which meet resistance? How much do they translate, linguistically and culturally? Panelists will discuss how to challenge prevailing Western ideas about Asia and navigate the publishing industry while hewing to their voices and vision.

A New Era for Translated Literature: Three Indie Publishers Discuss

Moderator: Edwin Frank, Presenters: Adam Levy, Maya Solovej

Room 324, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

From Jon Fosse’s Septology to Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human and Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection, translated literature that may have been previously categorized as “esoteric” has found increasing commercial success, due at least in part to BookTok and other literary influencer platforms. Editors from three indie publishers will discuss how this era of “viral” book trends may affect literary translators working today, and what they see as the future of translation and translation publishing.

University of Arkansas MFA Sixtieth-Anniversary Reading & Celebration

Moderator: Toni Jensen, Presenters: Alysandra Dutton, Chelsea Rathburn, CD Eskilson, Adam Clay

Bookfair Stage, Hall A-D, Level 100, Baltimore Convention Center

For over fifty years, the University of Arkansas Program in Creative Writing and Translation has served as a preeminent training ground for some of the nation’s best writers. Established in 1966, ours is one of the oldest MFA programs in the nation and one of the most innovative, offering degree tracks in poetry, fiction, and literary translation. This event will celebrate the program’s sixtieth anniversary with readings and remarks from notable alumni.

The Art of Editing Translations: Exploration & Guidance, Sponsored by CLMP

Moderator: Jennifer Kronovet, Presenters: JD Pluecker, Michelle Gil-Montero, Johannes Goransson, Aditi Machado

Room 323, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

This panel explores the work of editing translations, highlighting the editor’s role in bringing global literature to new audiences. Panelists will discuss the creative and ethical negotiations at the heart of editing translations. How can editors select work from different cultures with care? How can translations be framed with awareness and enthusiasm? How much play is there in shaping a translation? The panel will share diverse approaches that support cross-cultural exchange and connection.

Architectures of FuturoPasados & Untouchable Voices: Manoa Reading & Discussion

Moderator: Siobhan Ting, Presenters: Subramanian Shankar, Anthony Cody, Anushiya Ramaswamy, Heidi Rhodes  

Room 318-319, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Manoa Journal’s two most recent issues explore speaking truth to power through writing from the Latinx diaspora spread across the Americas and Dalit (formerly “untouchable”) literature from India in translation. Though widely separated in historical contexts, both issues highlight experimentation in form and language in writing from the social margins. Through readings and conversation, the event will explore the expression of marginalized identities in creative works.

Beauty vs. Fidelity: The Poetry Translator’s Gamble

Moderator: Barbara Hamby, Presenters: Andrea Jurjevic, Ariel Francisco, Dzvinia Orlowsky, Silvia Valisa

Room 323, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

What makes a great translation of poetry? Is it an accurate transcription of language, or transfer of tone, image, and poetic sensibility? In spring 2025, Silvia Valisa and Barbara Hamby organized a graduate seminar at Florida State University to explore this question. They invited nine experienced translators to share their work. Some of those poet/translators join this panel to examine the tension between accuracy and poetic transcendence and what informed their decisions.

Poetry in Translation: Sound & Musicality Around the World, Sponsored by ALTA

Moderator: Sergio Waisman, Presenters: Kristin Dykstra, Anna Deeny Morales, Karen Bishop, Vivek Narayanan

Room 324, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Can sound and musicality be translated? Taking cues from their translations of poetry from India, Chile, Cuba, Argentina, and Spain, the participants will consider: What happens to sound and musicality as it travels in and through translation? What is the relationship between sound, musicality, voice and memory, identity, race, and gender and sexuality in the translation of poetry?

Poetry from Nosotros: Bilingual Poetry Craft & Criticism

Moderator: Manuel Iris, Presenters: Jennifer Rathbun, Cristian Gomez, Mauricio Espinoza

Room 325, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Poetry, bilingualism, and identity converge as they resist hegemonic notions and reveal cultural cartographies and collective memories. The bilingual writers on this panel explore how they write, translate, and share their translingual work. The dialogue will shed light on how language constructs identity and a sense of belonging. They will share opportunities and challenges of bilingualism and reflect upon their experiences in the current cultural environment of the United States.

Translating the Dead, Sponsored by ALTA

Moderator: Diana Arterian, Presenters: Aaron Coleman, Chloe Garcia Roberts, C. Francis Fisher, Umair Kazi

Room 320, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Translators are anxious—about authorial intention, accuracy, misrepresenting the work. And that’s even when the author is alive! In this panel, we will discuss translating the writing of the dead, and the hard-earned lessons we have learned, including how to avoid exploiting common tropes (e.g., “the brilliant dead author”). We will also give practical advice on acquiring translation rights and engaging with estates—often essential elements of translating a nonliving writer’s work.

Traversing Genre: A Nightboat Books Reading

Presenters: Samiya Bashir, Monica De La Torre, Miranda Mellis

Ballroom II, Level 400, Baltimore Convention Center

This reading will feature four of Nightboat’s most prominent authors working across poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, presenting a dynamic constellation of writers who work across literary genre. This diverse group explores issues of ecology and ecopoetics; Black women’s lives and archives; class and economic factors; gender, sexuality, and trans identity; and multilingualism and translation in essay, memoir, short stories, novels, and a wide range of poetic forms and prosody.

Translating the Self: Memory, Migration & Myth in East European Diasporas

Moderator: Domnica Radulescu, Presenters: Alina Stefanescu, Annie Lulu, Adela Sinclair,

Bookfair Stage, Hall A-D, Level 100, Baltimore Convention Center

This multigenre panel explores the creative processes and voices that emerge from our diverse identities at the crossroads of migration, memory, and myth as we succeed or fail to translate our hyphenated selves into languages of exile. Our prose and poetry readings give voice to our hybrid cultural, geographic, and linguistic identities; intergenerational traumas; shared histories of authoritarianism; genocidal wars; or painful uprootings and reflect our strategies of reinvention and healing.

“This Is a Time for Mistral”: Eighty Years Since Gabriela Mistral’s Nobel Prize

Moderator: Emilia Phillips, Presenters: Claudia Cabello Hutt, M. Soledad Caballero, Anna Deeny Morales

Room 314, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957) won the Nobel Prize in Literature eighty years ago in 1945, but she remains mostly unread in English. This panel will engage with her rise from a rural educator to a poet, diplomat, and public intellectual; dictatorship propaganda about her and the reclamation of her image; archival evidence of her sexuality; the difficulties and rewards of translating her; and why more English readers—especially those interested in women’s and queer history—should know her.

Worlds Within Worlds: Fiction, Language & Intertextuality, Sponsored by Center for Fiction

Moderator: Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Presenters: Rabih Alameddine, Katie Kitamura

Ballroom II, Level 400, Baltimore Convention Center

Join two giants of literary fiction for an exploration of multifaceted, compressed prose that is both accessible and rich with nuance, insight, and meaning. Katie Kitamura and Rabih Alameddine’s novels, like those of Sebald, offer complex and unreconciled worlds. In both authors’ work, too, translation—and the untranslatable—works on multiple levels. Come for a craft talk that will open up new avenues of exploration in your work. Moderated by author and scholar Mecca Jamilah Sullivan.

This event will be live streamed and include live captioning.

Translating Gaza, Problematizing Translation: On Urgency, Critique & Publishing, Sponsored by Mizna

Moderator: Moheb Soliman, Presenters: Huda Fakhreddine, Mona Kareem, Yahya Ashour  

Ballroom II, Level 400, Baltimore Convention Center

Three percent of US books are translations, amplifying the powers and pitfalls of the discipline. The fraction of Arabic to English work, especially in light of Gazan genocide, holds clear urgency and impact despite risks of fetishism, voyeurism, and complacency—endemic to this literary field and ripe for critique, if not paralysis. Here, the theory and praxis of translating within empire are discussed through two contrasting, complementary publications by their editors.

This event will be live streamed and include live captioning.

Fractured Borders: Mapping South Asian Lit in Translation, Sponsored by ALTA

Moderator: Gauri Awasthi, Presenters: Aruni Kashyap, Mahmud Rahman, Rohan Chhetri, Sadia Khatri

Room 314, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

South Asia, home to hundreds of languages, has only recently gained global literary attention. Contemporary political tensions shape which languages and voices are translated and heard. Five translators working in Assamese, Nepali, Urdu, Hindi, and Bengali share their experiences navigating the global publishing world and explore the question “What happens to language when it travels?”

Infect & Inflame: Intimacies Between Translator & Text, Sponsored by ALTA

Moderator: Hannah V Warren, Presenters: Magdalena Zurawski, John Barger, Miriam Calleja Shaw, Robert Shoemaker

Room 324, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Literal translation practices can’t hold our source texts’ texture. The self infects and inflames translation: We must irritate English to create an effective equivalent. Considering our bodies as translation filters, we discard purity and embrace contamination. Five writer-translators will discuss and read translations from Maltese, German, Italian, Polish, and Spanish that approach intimacy and identity, investigating the blur between self and source.