Who We Are

Sean Gasper Bye joined ALTA's staff as Interim Executive Director in August 2024. Prior to that, he served on the Board from 2020-2024. Sean is a translator of Polish literature into English, focusing on contemporary literary fiction and reportage. His translations have won the EBRD Literary Prize and the Asymptote Close Approximations Prize, and been shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, a National Jewish Book Award, the Sami Rohr Prize, and the National Translation Award. He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow and Translator-in-Residence at Princeton University. Sean also mentors emerging translators through the National Centre for Writing and the Yiddish Book Center. He lives in Philadelphia.

Kelsi Vanada joined ALTA as Program Manager in July 2018. She is a poet and translator. Her first collection, Optional Saint, is forthcoming, and she has published a chapbook, Rare Earth. Her translations include: Day's Fortune by Carlo Acevedo (winner of the 2024 Sundial Literary Translation Award); The Visible Unseen by Andrea Chapela; Damascus, Atlantis: Selected Poems by Marie Silkeberg (longlisted for the 2022 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation); and The Eligible Age by Berta García Faet. Kelsi holds MFAs in Poetry (The Iowa Writers' Workshop) and Literary Translation (The University of Iowa). She a 2024 NEA Translation Fellow, and was a 2016 ALTA Travel Fellow. She enjoys building a readership for literature in translation by writing reviews and teaching occasional translation classes.

Rachael Daum has worked with ALTA since 2014. She was awarded a 2021 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for her translation from Serbian of Lusitania by Dejan Atanacković. She is the translator from Croatian of The Story of a Man Who Collapsed Into His Notebook by Ivana Sajko (Fraktura, 2023), and from Russian of Letters to Robot Werther by Natalia Rubanova (Carrion Bloom Books, 2021). She holds an MA in Slavic Studies (Indiana University) and BA in Creative Writing (University of Rochester); she also received Certificates in Literary Translation from both institutions. Rachael translates from Serbian, Russian, and German, and lives in Cologne, Germany.

Sophia Marisa Lucas joined ALTA in 2023. An arts administrator, curator, editor, and writer, she was raised in a bilingual Luso-American household and, from an early age, was drawn to poetry, rhythm, and nature. Previously she worked primarily in contemporary visual art, leading and supporting numerous exhibitions, publications, and digital projects with a conceptual focus on how we contend with the systems that shape our lives—from algorithms and municipal structures to narrative forms and linguistics.

Bouchra El Harrak joined ALTA as a Graduate Assistant in May 2024. She holds a BA in Translation and Interpretation Studies (English, French, Catalan and Moroccan Arabic) from the University of Alicante, Spain, and an MA in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Arizona. She is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics with a minor in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching. Her research interests include Morphological processing, Bilingualism (perception and production), Second Language and Heritage Language Acquisition and Teaching, Translation Studies, and Language Program Development, Direction and Evaluation. At the UofA, she is a member of the Arizona Applied Phonetics Psycholinguistics Lab and the Hispanic & Lusophone Linguistics Working Group.

Elisabeth Jaquette served as Executive Director at ALTA from 2017 to 2024. She is also a translator from Arabic; her translation of Minor Detail by Adania Shibli was a finalist for the National Book Awards and longlisted for the Booker International Prize. Other translations include Thirteen Months of Sunrise by Rania Mamoun, The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz, and The Frightened Ones by Dima Wannous. Elisabeth has served as a judge for the National Book Award in Translated Literature, the NEA Literary Translation Fellowships, and other prizes. She has also taught translation at Bread Loaf Translators Conference and Hunter College, CUNY. Currently, she is Executive Director at Words Without Borders.

Board

Elections are held annually in the summer and are governed by the ALTA bylaws.

Chenxin Jiang
President, 2023-2025 (previously: Vice-President, 2021-2023; At-Large, 2020-2021)
president@literarytranslators.org

Chenxin Jiang translates from Italian, German, and Chinese. Recent translations include Tears of Salt: A Doctor’s Story by Pietro Bartolo and Lidia Tilotta (Norton), shortlisted for the 2019 Italian Prose in Translation Award, Volatile Texts: Us Two by Zsuzsanna Gahse (Dalkey Archive), and the PEN/Heim-winning The Cowshed: Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution by Ji Xianlin (NYRB). In 2019, she was a judge for the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. Until recently, she was Senior Editor (Chinese) at Asymptote Journal.

Corine Tachtiris
Vice-President, 2023-2025 (previously: At-Large, 2020-2023)
vp@literarytranslators.org

Corine Tachtiris translates primarily the work of contemporary women authors from Francophone Africa, Canada, and the Caribbean as well as from the Czech Republic. She is Assistant Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She completed an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. Tachtiris previously taught courses in translation theory and practice and world literature at Hampshire College, Kalamazoo College, Antioch College, and the Université Paris Diderot. She is prose translation editor at The Massachusetts Review.

Sebastian Schulman
Treasurer, 2024-2027
treasurer@literarytranslators.org

Sebastian Schulman (he/him) is a writer, editor, and literary translator from Yiddish, Esperanto, French, and Russian. His original writing and translations have appeared in more than a dozen anthologies and journals, including Two Lines, Words Without Borders, and Electric Literature. Schulman's translation of Spomenka Štimec’s Esperanto-language novel Croatian War Nocturnal was published by Phoneme Media/Deep Vellum. He has held leadership positions in several cultural organizations, including as the executive director of KlezKanada, and in his current position as director of special projects and partnerships at the Yiddish Book Center. He lives in Montréal, Québec (Tiohtià:ke).

Esther Allen
Secretary, 2024-2027
secretary@literarytranslators.org

Esther Allen is a two-time recipient of National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships (1995 and 2010) and was a 2009-2010 Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She co-founded the PEN World Voices Festival, and guided the work of the PEN/Heim Translation Fund from its inception in 2003 to 2010. In 2006, the French government named her a Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres. For PEN International and the Institut Ramon Lull, she edited To Be Translated or Not To Be, published in English, Catalan, German and other languages. Her translation of Zama, by Antonio Di Benedetto, received the 2017 National Translation Award for Prose. In 2018-2019, she was a Guggenheim Fellow. Her most recent translation is Antonio Di Benedetto’s The Suicides (forthcoming 2025). She is a professor at Baruch College, where she directs the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program, and in the Ph.D. Programs in Comparative Literature, French, and Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures at City University of New York Graduate Center. Website: estherallen.com.

Fabian Alfie
At-Large, 2023-2026

Fabian Alfie is a Professor of Italian at the University of Arizona. He earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1995, and he has been at the University of Arizona since 1997. His specialization is in the satiric literature of the Middle Ages, and he has published translations of Rustico Filippi (ca. 1230-1299), Folgore da San Gimignano (ca. 1270-1332), and, with his colleague Aileen Feng, Domenico di Giovanni nicknamed Il Burchiello (1404-1449).

Curtis Bauer
At-Large, 2023-2026

Curtis Bauer is the author of three poetry collections, most recently American Selfie (Barrow Street Press, 2019). He is also a translator of poetry and prose from the Spanish; his publications include Home Reading Service and Mothers and Dogs by Fabio Morábito (Other Press, 2021 & 2023), Land of Women, by María Sánchez (Trinity University Press, 2022) and This Could Take Some Time by Clara Muschietti (Eulalia Books, 2022). He is International Advisory Editor for Vaso Roto Ediciones (Mexico & Spain). He teaches Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.

Geoffrey Brock
At-Large, 2022-2025

Geoffrey Brock is the author of three books of poems, the editor of The FSG Book of 20th-Century Italian Poetry, and the translator of a dozen books of poetry, prose, and comics, most recently Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Allegria (Archipelago, 2020), which received ALTA’s National Translation Award in poetry. He has also received translation awards from the NEA, the MLA, the PEN Center USA, the Academy of American Poets, Poetry magazine, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing & Translation at the University of Arkansas, where he is the founding editor of the Arkansas International.

Nancy Naomi Carlson
At-Large, 2022-2025 (previously: At-Large, 2019-2022)

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.

Bonnie Chau
At-Large, 2023-2026 (previously: At-Large, 2020-2023)

Bonnie Chau is a writer and translator from Southern California. She is the author of the short story collection All Roads Lead to Blood (2018), and her writing has appeared in Flaunt, The Offing, Joyland, Two Lines, Fence, Bennington Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA in fiction with a joint concentration in literary translation from Columbia University, where she has also taught translation. She was a 2017 ALTA Travel fellow, and has also received fellowships and residency support from Kundiman, Art Farm Nebraska, Vermont Studio Center, the Millay Colony and the Black Mountain Institute.

Denise Kripper
At-Large, 2024-2027

Denise Kripper is a bilingual literary translator (Spanish/English) and a translation studies scholar. She is Associate Professor of Spanish at Lake Forest College and Translation Editor at Latin American Literature Today. She wrote Narratives of Mistranslation: Fictional Translators in Latin American Literature (2023) and coedited The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Literary Translation (2023). Born and raised in Argentina, she currently lives in Chicago, where she is a founding member of the Third Coast Translators Collective. www.denisekripper.com

Aviya Kushner
At-Large, 2022-2025 (previously: At-Large, 2019-2022)

Aviya Kushner grew up in a Hebrew-speaking home in New York. She is the author of WOLF LAMB BOMB (Orison Books, 2021), winner of The Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry and a New & Noteworthy selection by The New York Times, and The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible (Spiegel & Grau, 2015), a National Jewish Book Award Finalist and Sami Rohr Prize Finalist. She is The Forward’s language columnist and a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts fellow in translation, as well as an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago, where she directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Larissa Kyzer
At-Large, 2023-2026

Larissa Kyzer is a writer and translator from Icelandic. Her translation of Kristín Eiríksdóttir’s A Fist or a Heart was awarded the American Scandinavian Foundation’s 2019 translation prize. The same year, she was one of Princeton University’s Translators in Residence. Her translation of Sigríður Hagalín Björnsdóttir’s The Fires was released in 2023 and will be followed by Fríða Ísberg’s The Mark and Snæbjörn Arngrímsson’s One True Word in 2024. Larissa has received grant funding and support from organizations including the Fulbright Commission, the Icelandic Literature Center, and Finland’s Kone Foundation. She is a former co-chair of PEN America’s Translation Committee and runs the virtual Women+ in Translation reading series Jill!

Margo Pave
At-Large, 2023-2026 (previously: At-Large, 2020-2023)

Margo Pave is an independent legal consultant in Washington D.C., providing strategic, legislative, and regulatory analysis; compliance assistance; and litigation services to local and national clients. She has served as counsel to national and local unions and non-profit organizations, advising on administrative, managerial and compliance matters, including statutory and regulatory requirements, constitution and by-laws issues, human resources policies and activities, internal and external audits, and contractual arrangements with service providers and other entities.

Jenna Tang
At-Large, 2023-2026

Jenna Tang is a Taiwanese writer and translator. She translates from Chinese, Spanish, and French. She graduated from the New School’s MFA Creative Writing Program in Fiction. Her translations and essays are published in The Paris Review, Latin American Literature Today, AAWW, Catapult, Mcsweeney’s, and elsewhere. She is a 2021 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program mentee in Taiwanese prose. She has translated Lin Yi-Han’s novel, Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise, which is forthcoming from HarperVia in June 2024.

Umair Kazi
Non-Voting Advisor, 2023-2026

Umair Kazi is a lawyer, writer, and translator from Urdu. He currently serves as the Director of Policy & Advocacy for the Authors Guild, and is a principal drafter of the Authors Guild’s Literary Translation Model Contract and Commentary. His translations of Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz have appeared in Circumference, Brooklyn Rail’s In Translation, Inventory, Exhanges, adda, and Pleiades.

Committees

Interested in getting more involved?

ALTA is a member-led organization and we rely on the perspectives and contributions of our members to direct our work. Learn more about our committees below and see opportunities to join, updated regularly here!

Executive Committee

Chair: Chenxin Jiang, President
Vice Chair: Corine Tachtiris, Vice President
Members: Patrick Blaine
Non-voting Members: Bonnie Chau, Equity Advocates Representative; Sean G. Bye, Executive Director

ALTA-University of Arizona Affiliation Steering CommitteE

Chair: Curtis Bauer
Members: Fabian Alfie (UA), Esther Allen, Sean G. Bye, Sonia Colina (UA), Richard Edmiston (UA), Aviya Kushner, Tyler Meier (UA), Kelsi Vanada, Chantelle Warner (UA)

Awards CommittEE

Chair: Corine Tachtiris
Members: Lucinda Clark, Rachael Daum, Jennifer Feeley, Lilian Huang, Tabatha Leggett, Gary Racz

AWP committEE

Chair: Becka McKay
Members: Amanda Andrei, Nancy Naomi Carlson, Timothy Gregory, Derick Mattern, Kelsi Vanada

Conference CommittEE

Chair: Chad Post
Members: Amanda Andrei, Subhashree Beeman, Joseph Brockway, Nancy Naomi Carlson, Denise Kripper, Tess Lewis, Lourdes Molina, Vivek Narayanan, Jenna Tang, Kelsi Vanada

Theater Programming CommitteE

Members: Neil Blackadder, Sean G. Bye, Slava Faybysh, Lauren Finch, Taylor Gaines

Development CommittEE

Chair: Heather Cleary
Members: Sean G. Bye, Rachael Daum, Marguerite Feitlowitz, Aviya Kushner, Shabnam Nadiya

Equity AdvocaTES

Chair: Jenna Tang
Members: Bonnie Chau, Soleil Davíd, Umair Kazi, Dong Li, Bruna Dantas Lobato, Paige Aniyah Morris, Jacob Rogers

Finance CommitteE

Chair: Patrick Blaine, Treasurer
Members: Curtis Bauer, Sean G. Bye, Chenxin Jiang, Sebastian Schulman, Linda Worrell

Governance Committee

Chair: Chenxin Jiang
Members: Aron Aji, Patrick Blaine, Margo Pave

Membership Committee

Chair: Corine Tachtiris

Members: Kanika Agrawal, Curtis Bauer, Geoff Brock, Sophia Marisa Lucas, Zoë Perry, Cynthia Shin, Tiffany Troy

Nominating Committee

Chair: Allison Charette
Members: determined seasonally

Past Presidents Council

Chair: Ellen Elias-Bursać
Members: Aron Aji, John Balaban, John Balcom, David Ball, John Biguenet, Annie Fisher, Barbara Harshav, Lynn Hoggard, Jim Kates, Dennis Kratz, Breon Mitchell, Gregary Racz, Marian Schwartz, Russell Valentino

Website Redesign Task Force

Chair: Subhashree Beeman
Members: Sean G. Bye, Ellen Elias-Bursać, Elisabeth Jaquette, Sophia Marisa Lucas, Samantha Schnee, Patrick Blaine

Mentorship Program Liaison

Sean G. Bye

Faculty Affiliates

Join the ALTA community at the University of Arizona!

ALTA’s Faculty Affiliates at the University of Arizona are a crucial part of our shared effort to advocate for bold, diverse approaches to literary translation and multilingual arts in research, teaching, and public life at all levels—local, national, and international. See our current UA affiliates below, and learn more about joining and benefits here.

Fabian Alfie, French and Italian (College of Humanities)

Dalila Ayoun, French and Italian (College of Humanities)

Maria Letizia Bellocchio, Italian Studies (College of Humanities)

Beppe Cavatorta, Italian Studies (College of Humanities)

Albrecht Classen, German Studies (College of Humanities)

Sonia Colina, Spanish & Portuguese, National Center for Interpretation (College of Humanities)

Scott Gregory, East Asian Studies (College of Humanities)

Benjamin Jens, Russian and Slavic Studies (College of Humanities)

Sarah Kortemeier, The UA Poetry Center (College of Humanities)

Kristin Dauphinais, Fred Fox School of Music (College of Fine Arts)

Reid Gómez, Gender & Women's Studies (College of Social & Behavioral Sciences)

Faith Harden, Spanish & Portuguese (College of Humanities)

Colleen Lucey, Russian & Slavic Studies (College of Humanities)

Farid Matuk, English (College of Social & Behavioral Sciences)

Tyler Meier, The UA Poetry Center (College of Humanities)

Sarah McCallum, Classics (College of Humanities)

Janice McGregor, German Studies (College of Humanities)

Cristina Ramírez, English (College of Social & Behavioral Sciences)

Judd Ruggill, Public and Applied Humanities (College of Humanities)

Sara Sams, English (College of Social & Behavioral Sciences)

Susan Swanberg, School of Journalism (College of Social & Behavioral Sciences)

Lucy Swanson, French and Italian (College of Humanities)

Chantelle Warner, German Studies, CERCLL (College of Humanities)

Jiang Wu, Center for Buddhist Studies, East Asian Studies (College of Humanities)

Karen Zimmermann, School of Art (College of Fine Arts)

STAFF

BOARD

COMMITTEES

FACULTY AFFILIATES

Staff