Video Library

Combining a publisher’s viewpoint with successful anecdotes from an emerging translator, we hope to make attendees feel much more confident as they send their work into the world.

At this link, please find a packet of materials that will be covered in the session.

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Moderator

Chad W. Post is the director of Open Letter Books at the University of Rochester.

Presenter

Katie Whittemore translates from Spanish. She is the translator of Sara Mesa’s Four by Four (Open Letter Books) and forthcoming translations include novels by Sara Mesa, Javier Serena, Aliocha Coll, Aroa Moreno Durán, Lara Moreno, and Nuria Labari. Her translations have appeared in Two Lines, The Arkansas International, The Common, Gulf Coast, The Brooklyn Rail, EuropeNow, and InTranslation.

Panelists will address issues such as: How can translators approach the work of authors whose experiences with race and gender are not their own with care and humility? How do translators handle misogyny in texts? How do translators of color manage assumptions about which literatures they translate? How can translators convey frameworks of race and gender that are different from the dominant Anglo-American ones?

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Moderator

Bruna Dantas Lobato is a Brazilian writer and translator based in St. Louis. Her work has appeared in A Public Space, BOMB, The Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. Her translation of Caio Fernando Abreu’s Moldy Strawberries received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and is forthcoming from Archipelago Books.

Panelists

Wendy Call is co-editor of the craft anthology Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide (Penguin, 2007), author of No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy (Nebraska, 2011), and translator of In the Belly of Night and Other Poems by Mexican-Binnizá poet Irma Pineda (Pluralia, 2021). She has received grants and fellowships for translations (from Spanish, of poetry by Indigenous Latin American women) from the Fulbright Commission, Jack Straw Foundation, and National Endowment for the Arts. Her recent translations of poetry by Colombian and Mexican authors have been published in Modern Poetry in Translation, World Literature Today, and Waxwing. She is Associate Professor of English at Pacific Lutheran University, also affiliated with the university’s Environmental Studies, Latino Studies, and Native & Indigenous Studies programs. Paige Aniyah Morris is a writer and translator from Jersey City, NJ, currently based in Seoul, South Korea. She holds BAs in Ethnic Studies and Literary Arts from Brown University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Newark. The recipient of awards from the Fulbright Program and the American Literary Translators Association, her writing and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in The Margins, The Rumpus, Strange Horizons, Nabillera, Necessary Fiction, and more. Jennifer Shyue is a translator of Cuban and Asian-Peruvian writers. She has an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa and received a Fulbright grant to Peru in 2019. Her translations appear in The Offing, The Margins, Words Without Borders, and other outlets. Find her at shyue.co.

Translator, Author, Country, Language, Genre:

• Patience Haggin, Fausta Cialente, Italy, Italian, Fiction
• Ekaterina Petrova, Iana Boukova, Bulgaria, Bulgarian, Fiction
• Heather Green, Sarah Manigne, United States, French, Fiction
• Samantha Farmer, Jasna Jasna Žmak, Croatia, Croatian, Fiction
• Katherine Young, Narine Abgaryan, Russian, Russian Fiction
• Grace Sewell, reading with author Olga Krause, Russia, Russian, Fiction
• Irina Sadovina, Anna Nerkagi, Russia (Indigenous North), Russian, Fiction
• Paula Haydar, Basma Elkhatib, Lebanon, Arabic, Fiction
• Anna Chiafele, and Lisa Pike, Silvana La Spina, Italy, Italian, Fiction
• Cristina Pinto-Bailey, Maria Valeria Rezend, Brazil, Portuguese, Fiction

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Readers

Patience Haggin translates Italian fiction. She studied Literary Translation at Università degli studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” in Naples, Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship. Her translations have been published by Dalkey Archive Press, Asymptote, and Circumference. Ekaterina Petrova is a literary translator and nonfiction writer. She holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa, where she was awarded the Iowa Arts Fellowship. Her translation-in-progress of Iana Boukova’s novel Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow received a 2021 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant. Heather Green is the translator of Tristan Tzara’s Noontimes Won (Octopus Books, 2018) and Guide to the Heart Rail (Goodmorning Menagerie, 2017). Her poetry collection No Other Rome was released in March of 2021 (Akron Poetry Series, Akron UP). Green is an Assistant Professor in the School of Art at George Mason University. Samantha Farmer is a translator from Serbo-Croatian from Austin, Texas. They are currently a doctoral student of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. Katherine E. Young is the author of Woman Drinking Absinthe and Day of the Border Guards and editor of Written in Arlington. She is the translator of Anna Starobinets, Akram Aylisli, Inna Kabysh, and numerous Russophone poets; she was named a 2017 NEA translation fellow. She served as the inaugural poet laureate for Arlington, Virginia. Grace Sewell is a junior at Swarthmore College with Honors majors in Russian and Spanish. She is also an alumna of the Yiddish Book Center’s 2021 Steiner Program. From 2020- 2021, she studied Russian to English translation at UW Milwaukee. She hopes to earn a PhD in Comparative Literature and practice translation professionally. Irina Sadovina translates mostly Russian-language works, such as a short story by Denis Osokin and a Holocaust survivor memoir by Svetlana-Kogan Rabinovich. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and another in Folklore. Coming from the minority ethnic community of the Meadow Mari, Sadovina is passionate about bringing diverse voices from Russia to the attention of Anglophone audiences. Paula Haydar is Assistant Professor of Arabic at the Department of World Languages, University of Arkansas. She has translated thirteen contemporary Arabic novels by Lebanese, Palestinian, and Jordanian writers into English. She received her MFA in Literary Translation (1998) and PhD in Comparative Literature (2014) from the University of Arkansas. Anna Chiafele is an Associate Professor of Italian Studies at Auburn University, in Alabama. Together with Canadian writer Lisa Pike, Chiafele published a translation of Silvana La Spina’s novel Penelope with Bordighera Press in 2021. Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Cristina Pinto-Bailey is a writer, scholar, translator, and college professor, interested in issues of gender and race in works by modern and contemporary Latin American women writers. She has published extensively in scholarly journals, as well as her own creative works, and translations of Brazilian fiction and poetry into English.

In an event hosted by ALTA Board Member Nancy Naomi Carlson, the ten 2022 Fellows read from their translations.

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Host

Nancy Naomi Carlson, translator and poet, has authored twelve titles (eight translated), including Khal Torabully’s Cargo Hold of Stars: Coolitude (Seagull Books, 2021), which won the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize. An Infusion of Violets (Seagull, 2019), her second full-length poetry collection, was named “New & Noteworthy” by The New York Times. A recipient of two NEA literature translation grants, she was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award and the CLMP Firecracker Poetry Award. Decorated with the French Academic Palms, she is the translation editor for On the Seawall. Carlson has earned two doctorates, including one in foreign language methodology.

2022 Travel Fellows

Jasmine Alexander-Greene, 2022 Peter K. Jansen Memorial Virtual Travel Fellow (Russian). Jasmine Alexander-Greene’s path to literary translation, much like her path to things Russian-related, was a matter of happy coincidence. A language instructor at Duke University introduced her to fellow translator Dr. Carol Apollonio, who later became Jasmine’s mentor. Dr. Apollonio’s course on theory and practice served as a gateway to the translating life. Years later, with hard work and the generous assistance of colleagues including Anne O. Fisher and Nora Favorov, she is proud to call herself part of the literary translation community. Learn more about Jasmine here. Soleil Davíd, 2022 Peter K. Jansen Memorial Virtual Travel Fellow (Filipino/Tagalog). Soleil Davíd is a poet, writer, and translator from the Philippines. Her translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Two Lines and Ulirát: The Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines. She has received support from PEN America, VONA, and Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference. She is a senior editor at The Margins. Learn more about Soleil here.Michele Bantz, 2022 Virtual Travel Fellow (Spanish, Portuguese)Michele Bantz is an ATA-certified translator of Spanish and Portuguese. She was awarded the 2021 Granum Foundation Translation Prize for her work-in-progress translation of O Fogo Será a Tua Casa by contemporary Portuguese novelist Nuno Camarneiro. She holds an MA in Translation (Spanish-English) from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS) at Monterey and attended the Middlebury Portuguese Language School. Learn more about Michele here. Yana Ellis, 2022 Virtual Travel Fellow (German, Bulgarian). Yana Ellis is a Bulgarian-born freelance translator and Modern foreign languages teacher based in the UK. She holds an MA in Translation from the University of Bristol. She translates from German and Bulgarian into English and is drawn to narratives that explore issues of identity, immigration, and the representation of the ‘other’. Learn more about Yana here. Note: Rights to the text Yana will be reading in her translation are held by Suhrkamp. Salma Harland, 2022 Virtual Travel Fellow (Arabic, English). Salma Harland is an Egyptian translator based in England. She is passionate about translating key texts from pre-Nahda and (post)modern Arabic poetry that have been forgotten or understated in English. Her translations have appeared in the British National Centre for Writing’s Emerging Translators Anthology (2022) and in literary journals/magazines. Learn more about Salma here. Michelle Mirabella, 2022 Virtual Travel Fellow (Spanish). Michelle Mirabella is a Spanish to English translator whose work appears in The Arkansas International, World Literature Today, Latin American Literature Today, Firmament, and elsewhere. A finalist in Columbia Journal’s 2022 Spring Contest, she is an alumna of the Middlebury Institute and the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Learn more about Michelle here. Nidhi Singh, 2022 Virtual Travel Fellow (Hindi). Nidhi Singh is a translator of Hindi poetry. She holds an MA in English from Delhi University and is currently a PhD student in Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship and her translation has appeared in World Literature Today. Learn more about Nidhi here. Suzana Vuljevic, 2022 Virtual Travel Fellow (Albanian and Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian).
Suzana Vuljevic is a historian, writer, and translator who works from Albanian and Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian. Suzana holds a Ph.D. in History and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. Her writing and translations have appeared in AGNI, Asymptote, Eurozine, Exchanges, and elsewhere. Learn more about Suzana here. Rebecca Weingart, 2022 Virtual Travel Fellow (Yiddish). Rebecca Weingart is a PhD student in comparative literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Her translation of poems by Roshelle Weprinsky was supported by the Yiddish Book Center. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and has work published in NonBinary Review, So It Goes, and Pakn Treger. Learn more about Rebecca here. Hongyu Jasmine Zhu (朱弘昱), 2022 Virtual Travel Fellow (Chinese, English, Latin). Hongyu Jasmine Zhu (朱弘昱) hails from Chengdu, China, and is a high school student at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. She grows up surrounded by the beautiful, messy sounds of her mother tongue. In 2022 spring, she adapted her English translation of Sanmao(三毛)’s short story “吹兵” into an 8-minute monologue, and performed it at her high school’s annual Declamation. Learn more about Hongyu Jasmine here.

Creating a social media account is easy, but the choice of platform(s) to start with can be daunting. Is one platform better than the others to help you achieve your goals? Who do we want to reach out to – editors, publishers, readers? What should we post and is there really a golden time or day for maximum engagement? Anton Hur, Matthew Sciarappa, Sawad Hussain and moderator Yuki Tejima will share their experience and know-how in this panel comprising literary translators, book bloggers and social media experts in publishing.

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Moderator

Yuki Tejima is a Japanese-to-English translator from Los Angeles, currently based in Tokyo. She is translating Hitomi Kanehara’s Unsocial Distance under the guidance of mentor David Boyd in the 2023 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program. Her translation of Risa Wataya’s latest work is also forthcoming this year.

Panelists

Matthew Sciarappa is a Marketing Associate and Social Media Manager at Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House, where he has coordinated campaigns for award-winning authors such as Orhan Pamuk, Sandra Cisneros, and Cormac McCarthy. He runs self-titled Booktube and Bookstagram channels and currently resides in Brooklyn.
Sawad Hussain is a translator from Arabic. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards and the 2023 National Translation Award. Her most recent translations include Black Foam by Haji Jaber (Amazon Crossing) and What Have You Left Behind by Bushra al-Maqtari (Fitzcarraldo Editions). Her website is: https://sawadhussain.com