Third Place Books Ravenna hosts translator Mia Spangenberg in Seattle. Mia will discuss her translation of Finnish author Pirkko Saisio’s The Red Book of Farewells with Dr. Elizabeth DeNoma.
This event is free and open to the public and will include a public book signing and time for audience Q&A. Registration(opens in a new tab) is required in advance.
Pirkko Saisio’s autofictional novel, in Mia Spangenberg’s tender translation from Finnish, is a mesmerizing account of radical politics and sexual awakening in a series of farewells—to her mother, to the idealism of youth, to friends and lovers, and finally to her grown daughter. The novel embeds readers in a delirious Finland, where art and communist politics are hopelessly intertwined, and where queer love, still a crime, thrives in underground bars. Playful and mysterious, The Red Book of Farewells stoically embraces the revolutionary potential of moving on.
This event is supported in part by FILI – Finnish Literature Exchange.
Pirkko Saisio (b. 1949) studied drama and completed her actor’s training in 1975. Her debut novel The Course of Life (Elämänmeno, 1975) won the J. H. Erkko Award. Saisio has been nominated for the Finlandia Prize seven times, winning it in with The Red Book of Farewells (Punainen erokirja, 2003). She has, among other awards, received Aleksis Kivi Prize and State Literature Award. Apart from novels, she has written numerous plays and scripts for film and television and is a well-known theatre director.
Mia Spangenberg translates from Finnish, Swedish, and German into English. Her work has been published in Finland and the UK, and appeared in journals such as LitHub and Asymptote. She holds a Ph.D. in Scandinavian studies from the University of Washington, Seattle, where she resides with her family.
Dr. Elizabeth DeNoma is a Seattle-based translator from Scandinavian languages, as well as a publishing consultant, and foreign rights manager with deep expertise in international literature. Her most recent translation is The Darkness Manifesto by Johan Eklöf, published by Simon & Schuster in the United States and Penguin Random House in the United Kingdom.