Litquake presents Words Around the World

Center for the Art of Translation is proud to sponsor the Words Around the World series, part of San Francisco’s annual Litquake Festival. Join us for these readings and conversations celebrating global literature throughout the months of October and November.

Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry(opens in a new tab)
Telegraph Hill Books, 1501 Grant Avenue, San Francisco

Poetry has always served as a mode of resistance in Palestinian culture. In defiance of dispossession and decades of military siege, of a nakba that never ended, of historical and cultural obfuscation, of unrelenting violence and thousands of martyred people, the “power to narrate,” as Edward Said wrote, remains a necessary tool for self-determination. As Palestinian history remains haunted by exile, violence, and grief, there’s more here that’s also true: queer and feminist perspectives, eco-poetry, meditations on love and time, and lineages of protest. These poems reclaim that power to narrate, bridging borders, languages, and generations to forge new conversations around resistance and liberation. Featuring Heaven Looks Like Us anthology contributors Zeina Hashem Beck, Janine Mogannam, Deema Shehabi, Jen Siraganian, Priscilla Wathington, and Omar Zahzah. Doors at 6:30pm. 

Jean-Baptiste Phou: Coming Out of My Skin(opens in a new tab)
Telegraph Hill Books, 1501 Grant Avenue, San Francisco

Having grown up as a Cambodian immigrant in France, Jean-Baptiste Phou has long explored the challenges and contradictions of the Asian diaspora experience throughout his artistic career. However, up until now, he’s always been careful not to raise issues of sexuality—in particular, his homosexuality. In his recent memoir, Coming Out of My Skin, the artist shifts his focus to examining the role his ethnic origin has played in the construction of his sexual identity and his romantic relationships in a predominantly white environment. An astute observer of the various ways in which his body has been perceived, Phou asks: how does a marginalized person develop emotionally and build, reclaim, and express their sexuality? How does this inform the experience of a queer Asian person navigating predominantly white cultural spaces? In conversation with César Cadabes, Artistic Director for the GLBTQ Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA) Theatre. Doors at 6:30pm

A Celebration of César Vallejo’s Trilce(opens in a new tab)
City Lights Booksellers, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco

First published in 1922, and rich in startling neologisms and other forms of verbal play, Trilce is a blazingly vivid revelation of what poetry can be, at once a love poem, a poem of erotic urgency and frustration, a poem of family life, of political fury, a lament for the dead, a work of intense privacy and an address to the world. In this new edition of Trilce from NYRB—the recipient of the prestigious Premio Valle Inclán for the best translation from Spanish into English—the translators Helen Dimos and William Rowe accompany each poem with a gloss. Their incisive commentary on these legendarily challenging poems opens them up to new understanding while inviting readers to find their own pathways to and through them.

Alain Damasio: Horde of the Counterwind(opens in a new tab)
Telegraph Hill Books, 1501 Grant Avenue, San Francisco

In 2004, Alain Damasio’s Horde of the Counterwind: An Epic Voyage to the Upper Reaches gained acclaim as France’s genre-defining sci-fi odyssey of the 21st century, inspiring the celebrated video game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and igniting the imaginations of millions around the world. Now, this seminal work appears in English translation for the very first time, offering even more readers the opportunity to experience a masterpiece of epic scope and visionary world-building in which twenty-three adventurers climb endlessly against the wind that plagues their desolate homeland. Their only purpose: identifying the mysterious source where eight centuries of past climbers have tried and failed. Join Damasio and Horde’s English translator, Alexander Dickow, for a conversation moderated by award-winning writer and translator Edward Gauvin. Doors at 6:30pm. 

Vigdis Hjorth: Repetition(opens in a new tab)
Telegraph Hill Books, 1501 Grant Avenue, San Francisco

From International Booker Prize– and National Book Award–nominated author Vigdis Hjorth comes her latest novel finally translated into English, Repetition. As winter approaches in Norway and the daylight dwindles, a chance encounter prompts a novelist to reexamine her past. The seismic events following her sixteenth birthday return with haunting vividness, exposing a story both utterly familiar and desperately strange. It was the year she first got drunk, the year she first had sex with a boy. She was watched like a hawk by an anxious mother and a silent, distant father. It was a year of typical teenage fixation and typical teenage frivolity, and of all the usual parental fretting. Until something else took hold, and her family made an unspoken decision and a terrible sacrifice. Only now, decades later, can these events come close to being comprehended. In conversation with Daniela Blei. 

Carolina Pihelgas: The Cut Line(opens in a new tab)
Telegraph Hill Books, 1501 Grant Avenue, San Francisco

Poet, author, translator, and editor Carolina Pihelgas is a leading literary figure in her home country of Estonia. Now, with The Cut Line, translated by Darcy Hurford, Pihelgas’s “extraordinary” (Estonian Literary Magazine) prose writing is available to English readers for the first time. In fewer than 100 pages, Pihelgas takes readers to a near-future Estonian countryside, plagued by the effects of climate change and poised for an impending conflict. These hints of future violence recall the protagonist’s own troubled history, even as she attempts to find serenity and order in the rhythms of nature and simple work. Joining Pihelgas in conversation is Sasha Vasilyuk, award-winning author of the novel Your Presence Is Mandatory. Doors at 6:30pm.

Nelio Biedermann: Lázár(opens in a new tab)
Telegraph Hill Books, 1501 Grant Avenue, San Francisco

Swiss phenom Nelio Biedermann has stormed onto the literary scene in a torrent—first racking up weeks on German bestseller lists for his debut novel Lázár, and later garnering a featured writeup in the New York Times for the novel’s English translation by Jamie Bulloch—all before the age of 25. His sweeping historical family saga has drawn comparisons to German masters such as Thomas Mann, and the epic tale was dubbed “a marvel” in a Publishers Weekly starred review. We’re thrilled to welcome Biedermann to San Francisco to discuss his novel in conversation with Blaise Zerega of Alta. Doors at 6:30pm.