Staff and Board

Erin Branagan has a lifelong interest in languages, literature, and the interrelation of countries and cultures. She speaks Spanish, French, and Japanese and has lived and traveled extensively outside the U.S.

Sarah Coolidge (they/she) is a queer editor and musician based in Oakland. They have worked at the Center for over a decade, serving as editor of the Two Lines journal before launching the Calico Series in 2020. They’ve had the honor of working with countless translators they admire and have edited work by Mariana Enriquez, Iman Mersal, Pirkko Saisio, Dorothy Tse, Wilson Bueno, and Elena Garro, among others.

CJ Evans is the author of A Penance (New Issues Press) and The Category of Outcast and received the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship and a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship.

Before joining the Center, Chad Felix worked in independent bookselling and publishing. A self taught designer, he received his MA in Liberal Studies from the New School for Social Research.

Before joining Two Lines Press, Karen Gu worked in publicity at Graywolf Press. While in graduate school, she worked for The Believer and the National Book Foundation. She is a fiction writer and Kundiman fellow.

Mark Hauber has more than fifteen years of experience in the nonprofit and education sectors. A lifelong musician, he enjoys photography, ultrarunning, and reading.

Michael Holtmann has worked in the arts for more than fifteen years. Prior to joining the Center, he held positions at the National Endowment for the Arts and the Folger Shakespeare Library. He has served on the board of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) and the international programming committee of the Bay Area Book Festival.

Aya Kusch attended California College of the Arts where she studied sculpture and poetry, and she has experience in bookselling, book publishing, and book distribution. Along with having a love for translated literature, she is obsessed with clay, haiku, and visual arts.

Dan Lau (they/them) is a queer Chinese American poet who resides on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land. Their poems have appeared in Bellingham Review, Poem-a-Day(opens in a new tab), and The Baffler(opens in a new tab) among others. With over 10 years of experience in grass-roots community building, non-profit management, and development, Dan is eager to leverage their skills to create lasting positive change for diverse communities.

Casey Leidig has varied experience in the book trade, having worked at a bookstore, a literary magazine, and a small press distributor. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature and French, and is passionate about contemporary poetry and children’s literature.

Winona Wagner is an avid bookworm, passionate about international literature and the power of storytelling. She is an advocate for the arts: literary, visual, and performing.

Kelsey McFaul is part of the editorial staff at Two Lines Press. She has a PhD in literature from UC Santa Cruz with a focus in African language literatures. She first joined Two Lines as a Public Fellow in 2020–21, supporting the creation of No Edges: Swahili Stories.

ill nippashi lives in Oakland, California. She has spent her career in independent publishing and bookselling. She enjoys the company of cats.

Alana Rodrigues is a poet who has always been fascinated by translation and language. She is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College. She previously worked in publicity at City Lights and literary magazines.

Stephanie Schubet received her MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College and spent six years in academic publishing before joining Two Lines Press. She has also studied creative writing, film, and theater and is particularly interested in the concept of setting as character.

Previously, Alyson was the Publisher of The Rumpus and founder of the boutique literary publicity and communications firm Nectar Literary where she first worked with CAT and Two Lines Press as a contractor. Before running businesses on her own, she was a publicist for Farrar, Straus and Giroux in NYC and McSweeney’s and City Lights Books in San Francisco, CA. 

Leslie-Ann Woofter, has worked in arts programming and curation for more than 15 years including positions at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the University of California Santa Barbara and the University of Kentucky as well as collaborations with The Center for Fiction, The American Library in Paris, and The London Library, among others. In 2024, she was named a Bloomberg Tech Fellow for the Center for the Art of Translation and its Digital Accelerator Program funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Michael Carabetta’s work has received recognition from AIGA, the professional association for design, and has appeared in a variety of design publications. He has conducted design workshops and lectured at design schools and universities across the country.

Barbara Paschke has been involved in translation for many years, as both a translator and translation advocate. Her publications include Riverbed of Memory; Volcán; Clandestine Poems; New World, New Words; and literary travel companions to Costa Rica, Cuba, and Spain.

Robin Pille grew up speaking Dutch at home and has traveled extensively abroad. She reads widely across many categories of fiction and nonfiction, with a particular interest in speculative fiction and children’s literature. Through her other volunteer work with Reading Partners Robin shares her love of reading with children, helping them discover that reading can be a joyful, life-long adventure.

Olivia E. Sears is a translator of Italian poetry and founder of the Center for the Art of Translation, where she edited the journal Two Lines for over a decade. Her translations of contemporary poet Mariangela Gualtieri have recently appeared in Arkansas International, Circumference, The Common, and Copper Nickel, among others. She is currently completing a manuscript of Gualtieri’s poetry in English, When I Wasn’t Dying.

Caroline West has always been interested in serious literature, but since retirement she has focused on literature in translation. Several years ago she embarked on Philip Ward’s list of 500 great works of world literature, which opened her eyes to classics outside the Western canon. As a companion project, she’s on the qui vive for the best recent fiction and poetry in translation.