The Queer Spanish Caribbean

What approaches can we explore for working with queer narrative and poetic structures that simultaneously subvert literary convention and cis-heteronormativity? How might we draw on our own experiences of US queer cultures in our work, and how might doing so reinforce American queer cultural hegemony? This session examines these questions in relation to the literature of the Spanish Caribbean and its diaspora communities in the US. Panelists will share examples from their own translation work that resist the boundaries of gender, sexuality, identity, and literary language.

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Moderator

Elizabeth Rose is a literary translator and PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. They translate from German and Spanish, and their scholarship centers the intersections of translation, queer theory, and transnational American studies. Their work has appeared in Alchemy, Tupelo Quarterly, and Raspa Magazine, among other places.

Eduardo Aparicio translates poetry and memoir from and into English and Spanish and from French. He translated Miami Century Fox by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias (Akashic, 2017) and Looking for the Gulf Motel / En busca del Gulf Motel by Richard Blanco (Valparaíso Ediciones, 2016). He lives in Austin, Texas.

Panelists

David Lisenby is Associate Professor of Spanish at William Jewell College. His translations of work by Abilio Estévez, Gerardo Fulleda, Anna Lidia Vega Serova, and others appear in Words Without Borders, Two Lines, Latin American Literature Today, The Mercurian, Exchanges, and Island in the Light / Isla en la luz. Achy Obejas authored the critically acclaimed The Tower of the Antilles and five other books of fiction. As a translator, she has worked with Junot Díaz, Wendy Guerra, Rita Indiana, and many others. In 2014, she was awarded a United States Artists Ford Fellowship for her writing and translation. Currently based in the San Francisco Bay area, she works as a writer and editor at Netflix.