Women in Translation Month spotlight on Two Lines Press Women Authors (Part 4)
Part 4 of our series showcasing the women authors of Two Lines Press for Women in Translation Month. Today’s list features Jazmina Barrera and Ho Sok Fong.
Jazmina Barrera
Barrera is a rising star of Spanish-language letters. Born in Mexico City in 1988, she has published her work in various print and digital media, has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing in Spanish from New York University, and is editor and co-founder of Ediciones Antílope.
We were thrilled to publish Barrera’s On Lighthouses in February 2020, just before the world shut down amidst the covid-19 pandemic. Equal parts personal memoir and literary history, the author’s “collection” of lighthouses explores the allure of loneliness and asks how we use it to create meaning. Barrera questions the nature of writing, collecting, and how, by staring so intently at one thing we are only trying to avoid others. The Paris Review noted “This book is a light at the end of the tunnel, showing us places we’ll see and things we’ll do when we can go out again.” Two Lines Press will publish a second title of Barrera’s, Linea Nigra, in 2022.
Ho Sok Fong
Ho Sok Fong is a Malaysian author who has garnered considerable praise in Taiwan, where her stories have been published, and has been described as “the most accomplished Malaysian writer, full stop.”
Lake Like a Mirror, Ho’s collection of short stories which Two Lines Press published in April 2020, is her first book to be translated into English and won the PEN Translates award.
Lake Like a Mirror offers a portrait of Malaysian society—contradictory, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, with a long and complex history and a contemporary society in constant flux. “While [Ho’s] subject matter mostly revolves around contemporary Malaysia and while she evidently draws on elements of Chinese modernist literature, Ho’s style evokes the work of European modernists, including Franz Kafka and Italo Calvino, two writers she has mentioned as major influences on her work.” —Mekong Review
Maria Judite de Carvalho
Maria Judite de Carvalho is widely considered one of Portugal’s most important writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Born and educated in Lisbon, with a secondary education in France, Carvalho’s work spans painting, journalism, and fiction, with a specialization in the short story and novella forms. Empty Wardrobes, forthcoming in October 2021, marks de Carvalho’s English language debut.
Translated from Portuguese for the first time by Margaret Jull Costa and introduced by Kate Zambreno, Empty Wardrobes is a tale of women trapped in a patriarchal society and preyed upon by the ambient savageries that perch in its every crevice. Kirkus Reviews called it “a still, luminous book whose precise characters evoke broad truths about the human experience.”
Don’t forget that you can get the entire #WITMonth collection of Two Lines Press books by women authors—16 books in all—for the amazing price of just $250 during Women in Translation month, now until August 31!
