Each year 4-6 emerging translators are awarded $1,000 each to travel to the ALTA conference, where they participate in panels, workshops, and readings. Applications to be an ALTA Travel Fellow are open this year until April 15.
Maggie Zebracka was awarded a Travel Fellowship to attend the 2018 ALTA conference in Bloomington, IN.
In 2013, I trudged through a blizzard in Boston alone, getting lost several times between the AWP conference center and my hotel, even though the two buildings were located on the same street. Then, I underestimated how frigid and windy a gray spring in Toronto can be during the ACLA. A year later, I hoisted myself up spectacular hills in rain-drenched Seattle for yet another AWP. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy my experiences, but until I went to my first ALTA in 2018, I had resigned myself to the probability that it would be a long time before I felt warm at a conference.
I was thoroughly unprepared for how welcoming ALTA would be. From the intimate bookfair to the accessible and informative panels to the conversations that took place in the hallways, I was continuously surprised by the generosity and encouragement of the established translators I met and the inclusive community I encountered. It was as if the conference existed in a separate world where it was possible for an international collective to have gathered, almost improbably, in the quaint and lovely Bloomington to discuss this difficult little art. I was especially glad to have the opportunity to connect with several other Polish translators whose work I’d followed and admired for several years, from behind a computer screen. Reading and discussing Polish poetry with them—which is something that happens too rarely, I’m sure, for many of us who translate from a “minor” language—was definitely one of the highlights of the conference weekend.
Further highlights were all the events associated with the Fellows Reading—the pre-reading practice with Elizabeth Harris, the reading itself, and the meet-up with the previous ALTA Travel Fellows afterwards. I feel so fortunate (and more than a little awed) to have been part of such a fantastic cohort. Their stylistically, linguistically, and thematically diverse work reminds me just how privileged we are as translators to be able to bring all these different voices into a shared language and—in the case of the reading in particular—into a shared physical space as well.
The other readings I attended introduced me to the captivating performances of Jeremy Tiang, Bill Johnston, Kenny Lerner, and Peter Cook and the brilliantly inventive translations of Alina Macneal, Kerry Carnahan, and Larissa Kyzer, all of whom made me want to race back to my hotel room to revisit all those difficult phrases I’d temporarily given up on in my own work. For me, that’s the measure of a successful conference—one that is personally and professionally enriching and that re-affirms your love of the craft.
If the conference had been twice as long, I would have happily stayed. By the time the car was pulling away from the Indiana Memorial Union, I was already making mental plans for next year in Rochester.