Day of Translation 2024

Axxenne is a graphic designer, writer, and performer based in Saint-Étienne, France. She mainly works with non-profit organizations, striving to bring queer experiences to life through her work.

Arielle Burgdorf is a writer, scholar, and literary translator from the French. Their writing and translations have appeared in Lambda Literary, Broken Pencil Magazine, Amsterdam Review, Maximum Rocknroll, and elsewhere. They are the author of the novel Prétend, published by End of the Line Press and a forthcoming UK edition from Cool Moist Books. They were a THI Summer Fellow with The Center for the Art of Translation and are currently pursuing a PhD in Literature at UC Santa Cruz focused on queer and feminist experimental writers from Québec.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Don Mee Choi is the author of the KOR-US trilogy: Mirror Nation (Wave Books, 2024), the National Book Award-winning collection DMZ Colony (Wave Books, 2020), and Hardly War (Wave Books, 2016). She is a recipient of fellowships from the MacArthur, Guggenheim, Lannan, and Whiting Foundations, as well as the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. Her translation of Kim Hyesoon’s poetry won the 2019 International Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.

Fernando A. Flores was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and raised in South Texas. He is the author of Tears of the Trufflepig, Valleyesque, and the forthcoming novel Brother Brontë. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Samia Henni is a historian and an exhibition maker of the built, destroyed, and imagined environments. She is the author of Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (2017, 2022, EN; 2019, FR) and Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara (2024). She is the editor of Deserts Are Not Empty (2022) and War Zones (2018). She is also the maker of exhibitions, such as Performing Colonial Toxicity (Framer Framed, If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam; gta Exhibitions, Zurich; The Mosaic Rooms, London, 2023–04), Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria (Zurich, Rotterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Paris, Prague, Ithaca, Philadelphia, Charlottesville, 2017–22), Archives: Secret-Défense? (ifa Gallery, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2021), and Housing Pharmacology (Manifesta 13, Marseille, 2020). Currently, she teaches at McGill University’s Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture in Montreal and co-chairs Columbia University Seminar’s Beyond France.

Mayada Ibrahim is a literary translator and editor based in Queens, New York, with roots in Khartoum and London. She works between Arabic and English. Her translations have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published by Willows House in South Sudan, Archipelago Books, Dolce Stil Criollo, and 128 Lit. She is the managing editor at Tilted Axis Press, an independent publisher of contemporary literature by the Global Majority.

Elisabeth Jaquette is a translator from Arabic and Executive Director of Words Without Borders. Her translation of Minor Detail by Palestinian author Adania Shibli was shortlisted for the National Book Award and longlisted for the International Booker Prize. Other translations include Thirteen Months of Sunrise by Sudanese author Rania Mamoun, The Queue by Egyptian author Basma Abdel Aziz, and The Frightened Ones by Syrian author Dima Wannous. Elisabeth’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Words Without Borders, The Common, and World Literature Today, as well as a dozen anthologies. Formerly, she was Executive Director of the American Literary Translators Association.

Bo-Won Keum is a multidisciplinary designer, researcher, and educator living and working between New York City and Boston. Her design writing has appeared in Slanted and Triple Canopy, and she holds fellowships and residencies from Maharam STEAM and the U.S. National Parks Service. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and an MFA in Graphic Design from RISD, and currently teaches visual communication at the MIT School of Architecture.

Bruna Dantas Lobato is a fiction writer and translator. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Guernica, A Public Space, and The Common. She was awarded the 2023 National Book Award in Translated Literature for The Words that Remain by Stênio Gardel. Originally from Natal, Brazil, she lives in Iowa and teaches at Grinnell College. Her debut novel, Blue Light Hours, is forthcoming in October 2024 from Grove Atlantic.

Lily Meyer is a translator and critic, and the author of the novel Short War. A contributing writer at The Atlantic, her translations include Claudia Ulloa Donoso’s story collections Little Bird and Ice for Martians. Her novel The End of Romance is forthcoming from Viking.

Omar Mohammad is a first-generation Afghan-American Muslim. He designs physical and digital artifacts that relate to Afghan culture, Islam, and the natural environment.

A fourth-generation Japanese American poet and Kundiman fellow, Heather Nagami is the author of Hostile (Chax Press, 2005). Heather was born and raised in Southern California. She earned her BA from University of California, Santa Cruz, and her MFA from University of Arizona. Her poems have been anthologized in Poetry and Prose for the Phoenix Art Museum (Four Chambers Press, 2014), The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide (The University of Arizona Press, 2016), and Poetry at the End of the World (Moria Books, 2019). Heather’s recent work can be found in Poetry, jubilat, Sporklet, Dream Pop, and Lantern Review.

Idra Novey is a novelist, poet, and translator. Her new book of poems, Soon & Wholly, is out this September. Her most recent novel, Take What You Need, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2023, a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Prize. She has translated various Brazilian and Chilean authors and is the co-translator with Ahmad Nadalizadeh of Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian’s Lean Against This Late Hour, a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Prize in 2021. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into a dozen languages and she’s written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. She teaches creative writing at Princeton University.

Marouchka Payen is a Belgian graphic designer, member of Bye Bye Binary collective, and DJ. She focuses her practice on open source type design and research into queer/feminist circles in the graphic and musical fields.

Léna Salabert-Triby is a graphic designer, typographer, and tattoo artist whose work oscillates between graphic creations (posters, flyers, editions, etc.), visual identities (graphic charters, logos, etc.), typographic creation (custom typo, fork, etc.), and 3D form (3D creation software). Léna is also part of a Belgian-French collective, Bye Bye Binary, which works on the evolution of language and research and experiments around inclusive and post-binary writing.