The Birth of a Book: From ALTA Conference to Bookshelf

In this session, author, translator, and editor will discuss the process of bringing Boullosa’s eighteenth novel into existence in the English language, touching on editing, publicity, and sales, and finishing with a brief puppet-show reading featuring three characters from the novel: Anna Karenina’s fully-grown children—Sergei, her son with Karenin, and Anya, her daughter by Vronsky—as well as Sergei’s wife, Claudia, as the threesome departs for a concert at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on a winter evening in January 1905. Q&A to follow.

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Moderator

Samantha Schnee is the founding editor of Words Without Borders. Her translation of Boullosa’s Texas: The Great Theft was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the PEN America Translation Prize. She won the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation for her work on Boullosa’s El complot de los Románticos.

Presenters

Carmen Boullosa was born in Mexico City in 1954. She’s a poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, and artist who teaches at Macaulay Honors College—City University of New York. The New York Public Library acquired her papers and artist books. More than a dozen books and over ninety dissertations have been written about her work. Lizzie Davis is an editor at Coffee House Press. Her translation of Juan Cárdenas’ Ornamental was published in June, and her co-translation of Elena Medel’s Las maravillas with Thomas Bunstead is forthcoming from Pushkin Press. She has received fellowships from the Omi International Arts Center and the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference.