Photo credit: Mike Fallon

April 8, 2025 (Tucson, AZ)—After concluding its search process, the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is delighted to announce it has appointed Katrine Øgaard Jensen as its incoming Executive Director. 

Jensen joins ALTA from the Authors Guild, where she served as Executive Administrator and Project Manager. Previously, she taught Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Columbia University, where she also served as Acting Director of Literary Translation at Columbia (LTAC) from Fall 2019 through Fall 2020, and was retained for ongoing program support into 2022. In collaboration with the LTAC Director, she oversaw a period of record enrollments in LTAC and secured funding for an international exchange between Columbia’s Creative Writing MFA Program and the Danish Academy of Creative Writing (Forfatterskolen). 

In addition, she worked for six years as Programs Manager at the Council for European Studies (CES), where she led the expansion and administration of twelve CES programs—including the European Studies Book Award, several Pre-Dissertation Research Fellowships, and the Mellon-CES Dissertation Completion Fellowships, among others. Together with the CES team, she produced six international conferences for Europeanists, each drawing 700–1,000 attendees, and helped secure major grants and strategic partnerships for the organization by integrating CES’s programs with the journal EuropeNow, which she co-founded, built, and edited from 2016 to 2022.

Jensen is also a longtime member of ALTA. In addition to leading several multilingual workshops for ALTA, she has served on the judging panel for the National Translation Award in Poetry, which ALTA administers, and won the prize in 2018 for her translation of Third-Millennium Heart by Ursula Andkjær Olsen (Action Books, 2017).

“We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Katrine Øgaard Jensen as ALTA’s new Executive Director,” said ALTA President Chenxin Jiang on the appointment. “Katrine has extensive experience in the world of literary nonprofits and academic professional organizations. She brings with her a detail-oriented, systems-based approach to leadership and a depth of financial acumen. She also has a long history with ALTA and a love for literary translation in all its forms.”

Jensen will begin her new role on April 28, 2025. She will be taking over the Executive Director position from Sean Gasper Bye, who has served as Interim Executive Director since September 2024 after the departure of his predecessor, Elisabeth Jaquette. A period of overlap between Bye and Jensen’s work is planned, after which time Bye will serve in an advisory position. 

“We’re immensely grateful to Sean Gasper Bye for leading ALTA over the past few months and for the intelligence, grace and commitment he’s brought to the interim role,” said Jiang.

“It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve the ALTA community as Interim Executive Director,” said Sean Gasper Bye. “I want to thank our incredible staff, board and members for all the support they’ve given me to help make this transition a smooth one. It’s been a time of big changes for ALTA and I’m grateful for the trust that has been granted to me as we move into this new phase for our organization. I’ve known Katrine for many years: She’s a committed member of the ALTA community and a skilled arts administrator, with strong relationships across the literary arts sector. She’ll make a fantastic Executive Director and we are lucky to have her.”

About her appointment, Katrine Øgaard Jensen had the following to say: “As a seven-time ALTA conference attendee, I’ve long admired ALTA’s extraordinary staff and board. I cannot thank Elisabeth Jaquette enough for everything she has done for our translator community during her many years as Executive Director, and I also want to thank Sean for his leadership and hard work in ensuring the smoothest possible transition for everyone involved. 

“It is an honor to step into this role and work alongside staff members with deep institutional knowledge and a board composed of exceptional artists and intellectuals,” she continued. “What I look forward to most in this role is hearing their insights, as well as those of our membership, independent caucuses, and committees, to continue strengthening our community, advancing the art of literary translation, and supporting the work of literary translators. I will be bringing my own experiences and ideas, but what I love most about our ALTA community is how it belongs to all of us.”

“Katrine has been an especially valued and appreciated part of our team at the Authors Guild,” stated Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild. “We will miss her tremendously. She helped build out our project management capabilities and was vital to our day-to-day operations—in addition to acting as my personal lifeline. With her excellent management skills and her experience as a translator, Katrine will be a wonderful leader for ALTA. We wish her all the best and look forward to seeing her work at ALTA.”

A membership meeting to be held over Zoom is planned for Tuesday, May 20 at 4:00pm PT / 7:00pm ET. Members are invited to attend the meeting where they will be able to meet Katrine Øgaard Jensen in her capacity as ALTA Executive Director.

 

About Katrine Øgaard Jensen

Katrine Øgaard Jensen is a poet and translator of Danish literature. She is the recipient of several fellowships and awards, including ALTA’s National Translation Award in Poetry, the Kenyon Review’s Peter Taylor Fellowship, the Danish Arts Foundation’s Young Artistic Elite Fellowship, and Kjeld Elfelt’s Memorial Grant from the Danish Translators’ Association, and has been a finalist for the Best Translated Book Awards and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Ancient Algorithms, her collaborative poetry debut of mistranslations with contributors Sawako Nakayasu, Aditi Machado, Baba Badji, CAConrad, Paul Cunningham, and Ursula Andkjær Olsen, is forthcoming from Sarabande Books in 2025. Jensen’s translations include works, performances, and texts by Ursula Andkjær Olsen, Mette Moestrup, Shadi Angelina Bazeghi, Maja Lee Langvad, Josefine Klougart, and Inger Christensen. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University and a BA in Journalism from the Danish School of Media and Journalism. Her work has been supported by the Danish Press Foundation, the Lund/Bugge Foundation, the Danish Copyright Foundation, the Nordea Foundation, the Oticon Foundation, and Glashofs Legat, among others. Her latest work in translation is To the Most Beautiful by Mette Moestrup (co-im-press, 2024).

 

About the American Literary Translators Association 

The American Literary Translators Association is a nonprofit arts membership association that provides programs and professional affiliation to the literary translation community: individual translators, academic institutions, presses, and others working in literary translation. The annual ALTA conference and year-round events are structured around the creation of high-quality art. ALTA also administers awards to recognize excellence in translation and provides fellowships and mentorships to support emerging translators.