Upcoming WiT Virtual Readings

[[Update: Recording of this Reading now available here. The introduction of Melanie Magidow and Reem Bassiouney begins at 28:15. Melanie Magidow introduces the book at 29:45. Reem Bassiouney’s reading begins at 31:15. Melanie Magidow’s reading of the English is 34:50-38:00.]]

It’s August, and time once again to celebrate Women in Translation (#WiT) Month! This initiative was started six years ago by blogger Meytal Radzinski with the purpose of focusing on translating words by women or nonbinary authors and working toward gender parity in literary publishing—so important to freedom of expression throughout the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has opened up opportunities to include translators and the authors they translate in a virtual reading format, showcasing participants who might otherwise not have been able to travel to such an event in the past.

Organized under the aegis of the PEN America Translation Committee and hosted by Jill! A Women+ in Translation Reading Series, this event will bring together five translators joined by their authors, working in such varied languages as Guatemalan Spanish, K’iche’, Hebrew, Arabic, Galician, and Senegalese French. The reading, moderated by Anna Dinwoodie, will be followed by a brief Q&A discussion (time permitting). We hope you’ll join us for this one-of-a-kind bilingual reading!

On AUGUST 13, at 1pm ET, tune in for the first LIVE bilingual readings by translators from Guatemalan Spanish & K’iche’, Hebrew, Arabic, Galician, and Senegalese French. This reading will be livestreamed; you can RSVP and tune in via the Facebook page of our host, Jill: A Women+ in Translation Reading Series.

Gabriela Ramirez-Chavez is a Guatemalan-American poet, translator, and Literature Ph.D. Candidate at UC Santa Cruz. Her work appears in CentroMariconadas: A Queer and Trans Central American Anthology (forthcoming) and The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States (2017). She attended the Kenyon Review Translators Workshop with a scholarship.

Rosa Chávez is a Maya K’iche’-Kaqchikel poet, playwright, artist, and activist who is Guatemala Program Coordinator for the international feminist organization JASS Mesoamerica. She has published five books of poetry, including El corazón de la piedra (2010), and the play AWAS (2014). Her poetry has been widely anthologized and translated.

Joanna Chen is a literary translator and writer. Her full-length translations include two books of poetry (Less Like a Dove and Frayed Light, a finalist for the Jewish National Book Award) and a book of nonfiction, My Wild Garden. She writes a column for The Los Angeles Review of Books.   

Tehila Hakimi is an award-winning Hebrew poet and fiction writer. She was a 2018 Fulbright fellow at The University of Iowa. Hakimi has published a poetry collection (We’ll Work Tomorrow), a graphic novel (In the Water) and a collection of novellas (Company). Hakimi is a mechanical engineer by profession. 

Melanie Magidow is the founder of Marhaba Language Expertise, providing Arabic to English translation and other multilingual services. She holds a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of Texas at Austin. Magidow has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Commission. She is also a co-host of the Goodreads MENA Lit Book Group. For more on her projects, see melaniemagidow.com.

Reem Bassiouney was born in Alexandria, Egypt. She obtained her MPhil and PhD from Oxford University in linguistics. In addition to more than 8 books in linguistics, Bassiouney has 7 novels and has won numerous awards. Her novels have been translated into English, Greek, and Spanish. Her most recent masterpiece, “أولاد الناس ثلاثية المماليك” ‘Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy’ was published in 2018. Reem Bassiouney was awarded the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Award from Egypt’s Supreme Council for Culture for the best Egyptian novel of the year 2019/2020, making her the first woman to win this prize.

Laura Cesarco Eglin translates from Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician. She co-translated Fabián Severo’s Night in the North (Eulalia Books). Her translation of Hilda Hilst’s Of Death. Minimal Odes, (co•im•press) won the 2019 Best Translated Book Award. Her translations have appeared in Asymptote, Modern Poetry in Translation, The New Yorker, and more. Cesarco Eglin is the author of five poetry collections, most recently  Life, One Not Attached to Conditionals (Thirty West Publishing House). She is the  publisher of Veliz Books.

Lara Dopazo Ruibal has published four poetry collections and she is the co-editor and co-author of the experimental essay volume A través das marxes: Entrelazando feminismos, ruralidades e comúns. Her poetry collection ovella was awarded the Francisco Añón Prize in 2015, and with claus e o alacrán she received the Fiz Vergara Vilariño Prize in 2017. Dopazo Ruibal was a resident artist at the Spanish Royal Academy in Rome for the academic year 2018/2019.   

Aubrey D. Jones is Assistant Professor of French at Weber State University in Utah. She received her PhD in French Literature from the University at Buffalo-SUNY and has also worked in freelance translation since 2010. Aubrey is now involved in building Translation Studies in French at Weber State, as well as undertaking the translation of works of Franco-Ontarian and Senegalese poetry and fiction. She lives in Ogden, Utah with her husband and three children, and will often be found wandering in the mountains when not in her office.

Ken Bugul was born in Senegal in 1947 as Mariétou Mbaye. In her native language, Wolof, her pen name means “one who is not wanted.” From 1986 to 1993 she worked for the NGO IPPF (International Planned Parenthood Federation) in Kenya, Togo and the Congo. Ken Bugul’s autobiographical debut novel Le Baobab Fou was published in 1982 and is one of the most important documents in the Francophone literature of West Africa from the 1980s. Since then, Bugul has published many novels, which have been translated into several languages. Characteristic of her work is a highly literary language densely woven with the rhythms and fundamental thought structures of Wolof.

This reading will be moderated by Anna Dinwoodie, a poet and German-English translator. Anna received a Katharine Bakeless Nason scholarship to attend the Bread Loaf Translators Conference in 2019, and her writing appears in the anthology Poets of Queens (August 2020). She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, CUNY.

[Text from organizing committee]