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.

This week we are excited to feature Mara Faye Lethem, this year’s Catalan mentor:

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 featured as New York Times and Booklist Editors’ Picks, and among the Best Books of the Year in The Times of London, Readers’ Favourite Books in the Financial Times, and Publishers Weekly’s Picks of the Week. She has had shorter pieces (by such authors as Juan Marsé, Rodrigo Fresán, Pola Oloixarac, Teresa Colom and Alba Dedeu) published in The Guardian, Best American Non-Required Reading 2010, Granta, The Paris Review, Tin House, A Public Space, and McSweeney’s. Her translation of The Whispering City, by Sara Moliner, recently received an English PEN Award and two of her translations were nominated for the 2016 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She writes the New Catalan Fiction catalogue for the Institut Ramon Llull, and redacted the application that earned Barcelona designation as a UNESCO City of Literature.

If you are interested in finding out more about ALTA’s Emerging Translator Mentorship program and the other mentors, please check out our website and blog. If you are interested in applying, please see our online portal.