Women in translation – Literary South

Podcast: Italian author & literary translator Claudia Durastanti

February 23, 2022February 25, 2022Posted in Author, Claudia Durastanti, Indie press, Interivew, Literature, Literature in translation, Podcast, Radio show, Silvia Rothlisberger, Translation, Women in translationTagged Books, Claudia Durastanti, Literature, London, Ocean Vuong, Storytelling, TranslationLeave a comment

Claudia Durastanti is based in Rome, she has written four novels in Italian. She is co-founder of the Italian Literature Festival in London and is on the board of the Turin Book Fair. She is the Italian translator of Joshua Cohen, Donna Haraway, Ocean Vuong, and the most recent edition of The Great Gatsby. Two of Claudia’s novels have been translated into English: Cleopatra Goes to Prison, translated by Christine Donougher, and Strangers I Know translated by Elizabeth Harris.

Strangers I Know is Claudia’s fourth novel and the second one translated into English. A finalist for the Premio Strega in 2019, Strangers I Know has been translated into twenty-one languages. It is a first-person account of an unconventional family. Where Both parents are deaf and have no sign language in common – which allows communications to be rife with misinterpretations. The narrator comes of age in this strange, and increasingly estranged, household split between a small village in southern Italy and New York City. Strangers I Know is a profound portrait of an unconventional family that makes us look anew at how language shapes our understanding of ourselves.

Strangers I know is a novel, based on Claudia’s own family history. It is part autobiography, part mythology, part essay.

Video: Andrea Jeftanovic and Karina Lickorish Quinn in Conversation

December 28, 2021December 28, 2021Posted in Author, Chile, Debut novel, Feminism, Interivew, Latin America, Latinx, Literature, Literature in translation, Peru, Silvia Rothlisberger, Theatre, Women in translationTagged Bilingüismo, Books, Latin America, Literature, London, London Spanish Book and Zine Fair, Spanish, StorytellingLeave a comment

This talk was recorded during the London Spanish Book Fair

Chilean author Andrea Jeftanovic and Peruvian-British author Karina Lickorish talk about their debut novels Theatre of War (translated by Frances Riddle, Charco Press 2020) and The Dust Never Settles (Oneworld Publications 2021).

“A debut novel is a piece of the writer’s soul in a way that subsequent books can’t ever be” wrote authorAyana Mathis. In this talk Jeftanovic and Lickorish explore how their debut novels came into being, from the history of their countries to the ghosts of their past and the overlapping themes that connect them: memory, trauma, spectrality, the intersection of the domestic and the political.

Karina Lickorish Quinn is a Peruvian-British writer and a lecturer at the University of Leeds. Her short prose has been published widely including in Wasafiri, The Offing, Palabritas, and the Journal of Latina Critical Feminism. She was featured in Un Nuevo Sol, the first major anthology of British-Latinx writers. Her debut novel The Dust Never Settles will be published by Oneworld Publications in October 2021 and in Spanish as El Polvo Nunca se Asienta by Editorial Arde in 2022. Karina is represented by Seren Adams at United Agents.

Andrea Jeftanovic is a Chilean writer. Born in Santiago in 1970, she is the author of the novels Escenario de Guerra (2000) and Geografía de la lengua (Love in a Foreign Language, 2007), and of two volumes of short stories: No aceptes caramelos de extraños (Don’t Take Candy from Strangers, 2013) and Destinos errantes (2016). Of Jewish and Serbian ancestry, Jeftanovic grew up among three religions – Russian Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish. She studied sociology at the Catholic University in Santiago de Chile and in 2005 she finished a PhD in Latin American Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Dust Never Settles by Karina Lickorish Quinn

Theatre of War by Andrea Jeftanovic (translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle)

Podcast: Literary translator Sophie Hughes

November 25, 2021November 25, 2021Posted in Author, Chile, Feminism, Indie press, Interivew, Latin America, Literature, Literature in translation, Maternity in Literature, Podcast, Radio show, Silvia Rothlisberger, Translation, Women in translationTagged Booker International Prize, Books, Brenda Navarro, Daunt Books, Fernanda Melchor, Fitzcarraldo Editions, Laia Jufresa, Mexico, Sophie Hughes, Storytelling, TranslationLeave a comment

Sophie Hughes has translated such Latin American writers as Alia Trabucco Zerán, Laia Jufresa, Brenda Navarro, Guadalupe Nettel, and Fernanda Melchor. She is the recipient of grants from PEN/Heim in the US, and the Arts Council and Arts Foundation in the UK. Her recent translation of Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, the Dublin Literary Award, and longlisted for the National Book Award in Translation and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Sophie has also worked with the Stephen Spender Trust promoting translation in schools and is the co-editor of the anthology Europa28: Writing by Women on the Future of Europe.

Podcast: Literary translator and author Jennifer Croft

April 1, 2021February 19, 2022Posted in Argentina, Author, Indie press, Interivew, Literature, Literature in translation, Olga Tokarczuk, Podcast, Radio show, Silvia Rothlisberger, Translation, Women in translationTagged Booker International Prize, Jennifer Croft, Man Booker International Prize, Nobel PrizeLeave a comment

Jennifer Croft is a translator, author and literary critic who works from Polish and Argentine Spanish. She was awarded the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her translation of Flights written by Olga Tokarczuk. Croft’s recent translations are a Perfect Cemetery by Federico Falco (Charco Press), and The Woman from Uruguay by Pedro Mairal She is the author of the memoir Homesick, the novel in Spanish Serpientes y EScaleras ; the forthcoming novels Amadou, Fidelity and a book-length essay about Postcards.

Sound engineer: Oscar Perez.

Podcast: translator and author Jessica Sequeira

February 25, 2021February 19, 2022Posted in Argentina, Author, Chile, Interivew, Latin America, Literature, Literature in translation, Podcast, Silvia Rothlisberger, Translation, Women in translationTagged Atacama Dessert, Literature in translation, Osvaldo Lamborghini, Sara Gallardo, Sublunary Editions, Teresa Wilms Montt, Ventana Latina, Women in translationLeave a comment

Jessica Sequeira is the author of A Furious Oyster (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), the collection of stories Rhombus and Oval (What Books), the collection of essays Other Paradises: Poetic Approaches to Thinking in a Technological Age (Zero), and her most recent book A Luminous History of the Palm (Sublunary Editions). Jessica has translated poetry and prose by Latin American authors, both contemporaries as well as figures such as Winétt de Rokha, Sara Gallardo, and Teresa Wilms Montt. Most recently she translated a biography of the Chilean artist Delia del Carril Iraeta. Jessica is associate editor of Sublunary editions and is currently doing a PhD at the Centre of Latin American Studies, in Cambridge, on literary exchanges between Latin America and India.

Mentioned in this episode:

Osvaldo Lamborghini and His Work An essay by author Cesar Aira

Writing to the Dead: On Teresa Wilms Montt’s In the Stillness of Marble Essay by Jessica Sequeira

Sublunary Editions

Books:

Music:

Harry Beckett

Los Tetas

Miss Garrison

Sound engineer: Oscar Perez.

Literary South’s On Translation series

February 20, 2021February 20, 2021Posted in Argentina, Author, Brazil, Indie press, Latin America, Literature, Literature in translation, Olga Tokarczuk, Radio show, Translation, Women in translationTagged Fitzcarraldo Editions, Olga Tokarczuk, TranslationLeave a comment

After almost five years of interviewing authors from Latin America, Literary South is exploring a new direction to talk about literature in translation. Many of the authors that have been featured in the show are also translators and Latin American authors writing in Spanish can access English-speaking readers, and important literary prizes, thanks to the translations of their work.

That’s why Literary South wants to explore translation as an art and as a powerful tool to diversify the stories we read. The first three guests of 2021:

February: translator, author and editor Jessica Sequeira.

Jessica Sequeira is a writer, literary translator and PhD candidate at the Centre of Latin American Studies, based in Cambridge (UK) and Santiago (Chile). Sequeira has translated authors like Carlos Fonseca, Osvaldo Lamborghini, Liliana Colanzi to name a few. She is the author of A Luminous History of the Palm (Sublunary editions), A Furious Oyster, a novel (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), Rhombus and Oval, a collection of stories (What Books Press), Other Paradises, a collection of essays (Zero Books).

March: translator and author Jennifer Croft

Jennifer Croft is an American author, critic and translator who works from Polish, Ukrainian and Spanish. Croft is the author of the memoir Homesick (Unnamed Press) With the author Olga Tokarczuk, she was awarded the 2018 Booker International Prize for her translation of Flights (Fitzcarraldo Editions).

April : Translator and editor Eric M B Becker

Eric M. B. Becker is a writer, literary translator, and editor of Words without Borders. In 2014, he earned a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for his translation of a collection of short stories from the Portuguese by Neustadt Prize for International Literature winner and 2015 Man Booker International Finalist Mia Couto (now available from Biblioasis as Rain and Other Stories). He has also published translations of numerous writers from Brazil, Portugal, and Lusophone Africa, including, Noemi Jaffe, Elvira Vigna, Paulo Scott, Martha Batalha, Paulo Coelho, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade. Current book projects include work by Djaimila Pereira de Almeida, Alice Sant’Anna, Fernanda Torres, and Lygia Fagundes Telles (NEA Fellowship 2019), among others.