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Roundtable: Book Clubs Without Borders, a New Frontier for Translators
Roundtable: Book Clubs Without Borders, a New Frontier for Translators
From Denver to New York to London, new book clubs devoted to international literature are spotlighting translators and translation—and in the coronavirus era, they are going virtual.
In this roundtable, we’ll hear dispatches from book-club moderators in the US and the UK about what’s involved and how translators can make the most of the opportunity. We’ll also hear from a translator and publisher who has been featured, and we’ll have pre-recorded commentary from a translator and book-club member on how such clubs build community within the translation world and beyond at a time when connection is sorely needed. Contact info for existing clubs will be made available.
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Moderator
Aviya Kushner is the author of The Grammar of God and the forthcoming Wolf Lamb Bomb. She is The Forward’s language columnist, Associate Professor at Columbia College Chicago, and an ALTA Board Member. She translates Hebrew poetry and prose and is part of Chicago’s Third Coast Translators Collective.
Presenters
Natasha Gilmore is the buyer and manager of Idlewild Books, a travel bookstore and language school in Manhattan. She moderates the Women in Translation Book Club. A writer who has worked in publishing, she’s organizing a community-driven bookstore cooperative, Open Borders Books, in her home neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Queens. Carolina Orloff is an experienced translator and researcher in Latin American literature. In 2016, after obtaining her PhD from the University of Edinburgh, Carolina co-founded Charco Press, where she is Publishing Director. She is also the co-translator of Ariana Harwicz’s Die, My Love, longlisted for the Booker International Prize (2018). Maddie Rogers is the organizer and host of the Borderless Book Club, an online book club dedicated to translated literature. Maddie began working as Publishing Assistant at Peirene Press, a small UK publisher specializing in European literature, in December 2019, after completing her MA in Translation Studies at UCL.