August 16, 2017 — The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is pleased to announce the mentees for the third year of the ALTA Emerging Mentorship Program. Congratulations to our eight exceptional emerging translators:
Madeleine Campbell (Non-Language-Specific Poetry)
Madeleine Campbell has translated Maghrebi poets for the University of California Book of North African Literature, MPT Magazine and Lighthouse. Her first translations of Occitan poems by Aurélia Lassaque will appear in Poetry at Sangam. She recently contributed an essay to POROI’s Special Issue on the Rhetoric of Translation. Read more about Madeleine here.
Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello (Korean Poetry)
Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox, winner of the 2015 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and 2016 Florida Book Award bronze medal. She is a Knight Foundation and Kundiman fellow, and her work has appeared in Best New Poets, The New York Times, and more. She will complete the Korean poetry mentorship with co-translator E. J. Koh. Read more about Marci here.
Reilly Costigan-Humes (Russian Prose)
Reilly Costigan-Humes is a graduate of Haverford College, where he studied Russian literature and culture. He lives and works in Moscow, and translates literature from the Ukrainian and Russian. He will complete the Russian prose mentorship with co-translator Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler. Read more about Reilly and Isaac here.
Marlena Gittleman (Catalan)
Marlena Gittleman is a translator from Catalan and Spanish. She is currently earning a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, and obtained a B.A. in Comparative Literature at Barnard College. Some of Marlena’s translations of contemporary Latin American writers have been published in eL Paper, a bilingual arts magazine. Read more about Marlena here.
E. J. Koh (Korean Poetry)
E. J. Koh is the author of A Lesser Love, recipient of the 2016 Pleiades Editors Prize. Her poems and translations have appeared in Boston Review, Columbia Review, World Literature Today, PEN America, & elsewhere. She has accepted fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Kundiman, Vermont Studio Center, Jack Straw Writers Program, & others. She earned her MFA at Columbia University in New York for Poetry & Translation and is completing her PhD at the University of Washington for English Language and Literature. She will complete the Korean poetry mentorship with co-translator Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello. Read more about E. J. here.
Joungmin Lee Comfort (Korean Prose)
Joungmin Lee Comfort is a U.S.-based translator born in South Korea. She lived in Korea and France for 22 years before relocating to the U.S. where she has worked as an interpreter, ELL teacher, and a translator over the past 18 years. Read more about Joungmin here.
Zoë McLaughlin (Non-Language-Specific Prose)
Zoë McLaughlin translates Indonesian literature. Currently, she is a Library and Information Science student in the University of Michigan’s School of Information. She holds an MA in Southeast Asian Studies, also from the University of Michigan. Read more about Zoë here.
Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler (Russian Prose)
Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler is a translator and poet from New England, best known for his English version of great contemporary Ukrainian author Serhiy Zhadan’s novel Voroshilovgrad with co-translator Reilly Costigan-Humes, with whom he will also complete the Russian prose mentorship. Read more about Isaac and Reilly here.
Mentees will present their work during a special lunchtime reading as part of ALTA40: Reflections/Refractions, held October 5-8, 2017, in Minneapolis, MN. More information on the conference is available at www.literarytranslators.org/alta40.
Mentors for the 2017-18 ALTA Mentorship are Mara Faye Lethem (Catalan), Sora Kim-Russell (Korean prose), Don Mee Choi (Korean poetry), Marian Schwartz (Russian prose), Bill Johnston (Non-Language-Specific Prose), and Steven Bradbury (Non-Language-Specific Poetry). These mentorships are offered by ALTA in partnership with the Institut Ramon Llull, the Literary Translation Institute of Korea, the Russian Federation Institute of Literary Translation, AmazingCrossing, and the Amazon Literary Partnership. Details about the program are available at www.literarytranslators.org/awards/mentorships.
