ALTA45 Bilingual Reading Series: Cafe Latino (June)

Readers typically read for a few minutes in the an original language of the text they have translated, and then read in their English translation. Cafe Latino welcomes translations of texts from Spanish from Latin American countries.

…

Rowena Galavitz read from Ghost Horse by Karina Sosa Castañeda (fiction), translated from Spanish. Winner of the First Novel Prize 2021 in Mexico, this short novel of brief chapters rife with literary quotes tells the story of how a young woman finds ways to grapple with the recent death of a mother who abandoned her at a young age. Ka writes and reads her way through this loss as she makes entries in her diary and searches for clues about her childhood, her mother, and horses, one of the few things she knows her mother adored. Ka’s search leads her to all corners of Oaxaca until she discovers the mystery of the woman who birthed her. Based in Albuquerque, Rowena Galavitz lived in Mexico for 21 years. Her translations include: The Seamstresses by Elena Poniatowska and The Talking Disease by Jair Cortés. In 2018, she won a World Literature Today Translation Prize for poetry. She is currently completing a certificate in literary translation and an MA in comparative literature and religious studies at Indiana University. Karina Sosa Castañeda’s work has been published in two anthologies: Cartografía de la literatura oaxaqueña actual II and Después del derrumbe: Narrativa joven de Oaxaca, and in numerous magazines. Karina was on the Advisory Committee for the International Book Fair of Oaxaca in 2019. She is an editor and founder of the Zopilote Rey editorial project and is currently writing a book of essays. Dick Cluster read poems from Fiat Lux by Paula Abramo, translated from Spanish. Paula Abramo’s Fiat Lux, winner of Mexico’s 2013 Premio de Poesías Joaquín Xirau Icaza for the best book of poetry by a writer under 40, is a collection evoking the poet’s ancestors who were political refugees from Italy and Eastern Europe to Brazil at the turn of the twentieth century, and then from Brazil to Bolivia and finally Mexico in later eras. At the same time, it is a meditation on the act of writing poetry and bringing characters to life with fidelity and imagination. The hinge connecting the two themes is the recurring image of striking a match. (Abramo’s grandmother worked in a match factory in Brazil producing the brand called Fiat Lux, Latin for “let there be light.”) Dick Cluster’s recent books of translation include Gabriela Alemán’s Family Album and Poso Wells, from City Lights, and his edited anthology Kill the Ámpaya!: Best Latin American Baseball Fiction. He also writes history and fiction, including The History of Havana (co-author Rafael Hernández) and a crime novel series. Kymm Coveney read poems from the collection History of Milk by Mónica Ojeda, translated from Spanish. The second book of poetry by novelist Mónica Ojeda is a retelling of the Cain and Abel creation myth divided into six sections and explores female violence as it relates to love, family and artistic beauty. The unnamed narrator kills Mabel, and attempts to absorb all that is unfamiliar about her sister into her own bones. In an almost trance-like state, she dialogues with Mabel, their mother and, briefly, their father, as she faces up to what is left. Guilt, painful memories and maternal silence fill the disturbingly open space between the mother and the surviving daughter. Born in Boston, Kymm Coveney has lived in Spain since the 1982 World Cup. She is a freelance writer and translator, as well as habitual translation slam moderator for MET (Mediterranean Editors and Translators) and cohost of Barcelona’s PoémameBCN. Flash fiction, poems and translations can be found online through betterlies.blogspot.com. Lupita Eyde-Tucker read poems from Heart Diseases by Oriette D’Angelo, translated from Spanish. These poems Heart Diseases are lyrical, vivid, visceral. In the collection, D’Angelo explores the concept of disease as exile from the body, foreshadowing her own eventual exile from Venezuela. It’s a book that starts from the idea that each body is political and tries to save itself, even if that means cutting off a limb, or tissue, and feeling the absence of that part of the body forever. According to D’Angelo, “This book was born from the need to name the pain and the disease from the outside, assuming that the weight of our context affects our bodies.” Lupita Eyde-Tucker writes and translates poetry in English and Spanish. Winner of the 2021 Unbound Emerging Poet Prize, her first collection was named finalist for the Andres Montoya Prize from Letras Latinas. Lupita is pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Florida, and she’s a 2022 Staff Scholar at Bread Loaf Translators Conference. Visit: www.NotEnoughPoetry.com. Emily Hunsberger read an excerpt from Before It Disappears by Sylvia Iparraguirre (fiction), translated from Spanish. Sylvia Iparraguirre is a novelist, essayist, and important literary figure in her native Argentina. Before It Disappears (Antes que desaparezca) is her sixth and latest novel. It’s semi-autobiographical and weaves together two stories featuring the same protagonist, Lucía. One story takes place when she was a student in the politically turbulent era of the 1960s and 70s in Buenos Aires, and the other, in the current day, when an old friend shows up unexpectedly. This sends Lucía, who is now a successful writer, into a vortex where time and memory invent their own rules. Emily Hunsberger comes to literary translation with a background in community-based work, international sustainable development, education, and immigrant rights, as well as two degrees in Spanish. She translates fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by women writers from Spanish into English, and has also published original poetry, reporting, criticism, and research in both languages. Jeannine Pitas read from A Sea at Dawn by Silvia Guerra (poetry), translated from Spanish. Jeannine Pitas will read from Silvia Guerra’s A Sea at Dawn, a co-translation project with Jesse Lee Kercheval being published by Eulalia Books later this year. Guerra writes conceptual poetry grounded in the imagery of the sea and foliage of her coastal hometown of Maldonado, Uruguay. Themes of the work include consciousness and subjectivity (including of plants, animals, and even nonliving things), psychoanalysis, linguistics and the natural world. Jeannine M. Pitas is a teacher, writer and translator. A Sea At Dawn, her translation of Un mar en madrugada by Uruguayan poet Silvia Guerra (co-translated with Jesse Lee Kercheval) is forthcoming in Fall 2022.