Day of Translation 2025
12:00 pm to 7:00 pm ET
The Center for Fiction | 15 Lafayette Avenue | Brooklyn, NY
Event admission is free from noon to 5pm. Please note that seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-seated basis. Registration is required to attend one or all of the three free panels in person or to livestream(opens in a new tab). Everyone who registers will also receive a link to watch the videos a week or two afterwards.
Separate tickets are required for this year’s 6 pm keynote conversation with Jhumpa Lahiri and Katie Kitamura, and advance purchases are highly recommended due to space constraints. We expect to reach capacity. Please note the keynote event will not be livestreamed. Tickets for the keynote are now SOLD OUT.(opens in a new tab)
September is National Translation Month, a time to celebrate the art of translation and the role of translators in connecting cultures and making international literature accessible. On Thursday, September 18, 2025, Center for the Art of Translation will present its 6th annual capstone event, the Day of Translation, at The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, NY.
The Day of Translation connects readers of literary translation; literary translators at every stage of their careers; and anyone interested in the movement of ideas among languages, cultures, people, and places. This day of conversations about language and literature features provocative panels on translation, broadly defined, and culminates in a keynote conversation featuring Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri and best-selling author Katie Kitamura (SOLD OUT).
This year’s panels: “Resistance Translation,” a reflection on how translation can help subvert dominant narratives, amplify marginalized voices, and serve as a necessary act of resistance between writing and translating by extending the purview of resistance literature; “Meeting the Present Moment” on translators navigating cultural taboos, censorships, and establishing solidarity; and “Interspecies Translation,” a conversation that begins with the idea of how the languages of the animal, aquatic, and/or natural world can inform the way we understand narrative and storytelling. Panels will be livestreamed worldwide. The keynote event will not be livestreamed.
SCHEDULE
12:00 pm Doors
12:30–1:00 Welcome & Introductions
1:00–2:00 pm, in-person and livestream, free admission
Resistance Translation: The Ethics, Aesthetics, and Politics of Translating Resistance Literature
How do translators navigate the complex responsibility of serving as political agents while recreating both the aesthetics and the inherent purpose of resistance literature? What strategies enable translators to work toward liberation without catering to colonial tastes? How do you bring Palestinian literature to English readers when those readers are part of the system Palestinian writers are pushing back against?
Writer, translator, and performer Stine An, writer and translator Eirill Alvilde Falck, and writer and translator Khaled Rajeh will share case studies from their work, analyzing problematic translations and examining literary translation’s role in anti-colonial struggles from Palestine to Hong Kong. Moderated by award-winning translator Chenxin Jiang, this conversation will focus on how translation can subvert dominant narratives, amplify marginalized voices, and serve as a necessary act of resistance.
2:30–3:30 pm, in-person and livestream, free admission
Meeting the Present Moment: On Translators Navigating Cultural Taboos, Censorships, and Establishing Solidarity
With the rising number of book bans, political scrutiny of education and libraries, and refugees and migrants in limbo across the United States, how do translators navigate linguistic and ideological borders? What does it mean to translate literature in a time of growing censorship and cultural polarization? How can translators respond to book challenges, publisher hesitations, and various aspects of censorship, including self-censorship?
Writer and award-winning translator Anton Hur, writer and Persian translator Parisa Saranj, and writer and translator between Chinese, French, Spanish, and English Jenna Tang will discuss what it means, in concrete terms, to establish or contribute to one’s community through translation and how to deal with recurring issues such as exploitation and burnout.
4:00–5:00 pm, in-person and livestream, free admission
Interspecies Translation
What is gained in narrating from the perspective of a polar bear, a clam, or famously, a cockroach? This panel explores the idea of “interspecies translation” and how the languages of the animal, aquatic, and otherwise natural world inform the way we approach narrative and storytelling. Is it more freeing to be a clam than a woman? What happens to a polar bear’s voice when it’s translated both across species and across languages? Will we ever be able to understand animal language? Will they ever understand ours?
Join Susan Bernofsky (translator of Yoko Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear, New Directions), Bonnie Chau (All Roads Lead to Blood, 2040 Books), Anelise Chen (Clam Down, One World), and Kate Zambreno (Animal Stories, forthcoming from Transit Books) in a conversation about what translation can teach us about understanding the animal world and vice versa. Moderated by Dr. Elisha Cohn (Milieu: A Creaturely Theory of the Contemporary Novel, Stanford University Press).
5:00–6:00 pm
Break: Ticket holders will need to exit and re-enter for the keynote event. Proof of purchase required. The venue will release waitlist and walk-in tickets on a first-come, first-served basis, if available. The keynote conversation is at capacity and will not be livestreamed.
6:00–7:00 pm (Doors at 5:30 pm), in-person only, ticket required(opens in a new tab) ($10-$25) SOLD OUT
Day of Translation Keynote Conversation: Jhumpa Lahiri and Katie Kitamura on translation
Translation, broadly conceived, lies at the heart of the work of Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri and best-selling author Katie Kitamura. For Lahiri, translation is more than an art; it’s a profound metamorphosis, a radical act of reshaping text and self. Kitamura’s fiction features translators, interpreters, and actors, for whom translation is physical labor, an embodiment of another’s language, and a performance of intimacy. Using translation as their guide, Lahiri and Kitamura will discuss the journey of finding one’s voice in other languages and on the page.
If you have any questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in an event, please contact us at leslie-ann@catranslation.org(opens in a new tab) with as much advance notice as possible.
Jhumpa Lahiri, a bilingual writer and translator, is the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College, Columbia University. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies and is also the author of The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland. Since 2015, Lahiri has been writing fiction, essays, and poetry in Italian: In Altre Parole (In Other Words), Il Vestito dei libri (The Clothing of Books), Dove mi trovo (self-translated as Whereabouts), Il quaderno di Nerina, and Racconti romani. She received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2014, and in 2019 was named Commendatore of the Italian Republic by President Sergio Mattarella. Her most recent book in English, Translating Myself and Others, was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
Katie Kitamura is the bestselling author of A Separation and Intimacies, one of The New York Times’ “10 Best Books of 2021.” Known for her elegant prose that asks powerful questions about morality, identity, and narrative, her work has been translated into 21 languages and is being adapted for film and television. In her talks on fiction and identity, she delves into language, the immigrant experience, and finding her voice as a writer.
Stine An is a poet, translator, and performer in NYC whose work explores diasporic poetics, experimental translation, and virtual performance. Her poems and translations appear in Best Literary Translations 2024, Poem-a-Day, Poetry Daily, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. A 2024 NEA Translation Fellow, Stine is the author of SMMER CRSH (Sarabande Books, 2025) and the translator of Today’s Morning Vocabulary by Yoo Heekyung (Zephyr Press, 2025).
Susan Bernofsky, one of the preeminent translators of German-language literature, directs the program Literary Translation at Columbia in the MFA Writing Progam at the Columbia University School of the Arts. Among her many published translations are Yoko Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear, Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days, which won the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the small masterpieces of Robert Walser.
Bonnie Chau is a writer and translator from Southern California. Her short story collection All Roads Lead to Blood was a finalist for a 2019 CLMP Firecracker Award, and her writing has appeared in Flaunt, Two Lines, Fence, Bennington Review, Black Sun Lit, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction and literary translation, and has received fellowships from Kundiman, Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony, Black Mountain Institute, and the Stadler Center. She edits at Public Books, the Evergreen Review, and 4Columns; teaches creative writing and translation; and serves on the boards of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) and Art Farm Nebraska.
Anelise Chen is the author of the novel So Many Olympic Exertions, a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She is a 5 Under 35 Honoree from the National Book Foundation. Her most recent book, Clam Down: A Metamorphosis, published in June 2025, is a memoir about a woman who turns into a clam during a painful separation. Chen is currently an associate professor of creative writing at Columbia University. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with her family.
Elisha Cohn is Professor in the Department of Literatures in English at Cornell University and author of Milieu: A Creaturely Theory of The Contemporary Novel (2025), Still Life: Suspended Development in the Victorian Novel (2016), and essays, most recently appearing in Public Books and Post-45 Contemporaries.
Eirill Alvilde Falck is a Norwegian-born writer and translator who lives in the United States. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Poetry Magazine, and the anthology Best Literary Translations. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, where she was later a Zell Fellow. She was a 2020-2022 Iowa Arts Fellow at the University of Iowa, where she completed a master’s degree in Literary Translation. While at the University of Iowa, she received the Stanley Award for International Research for her work on translations of Edvard Munch’s journals. She is the recipient of the John Wagner Prize and the Hopwood Award, and has received support from the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, the Clarion Foundation, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. Eirill is the co-founder of MQR: Mixtape, an imprint of Michigan Quarterly Review.
Anton Hur is the author of Toward Eternity and the translator of various works of Korean literature into English including the National Book Award-finalist Cursed Bunny and the Dublin Literary Award-longlisted Love in the Big City. He resides in Seoul.
Chenxin Jiang (she/her) translates from Italian, German, and Chinese. Her most recent translation is for now I am sitting here growing transparent by Yau Ching for Zephyr Press. Other books include the PEN/Heim-winning The Cowshed by Ji Xianlin for New York Review Books and Tears of Salt by Pietro Bartolo and Lidia Tilotta for MacLehose and Norton, shortlisted for the Italian Prose in Translation Award. Chenxin grew up in Hong Kong and is now based in Denver; she serves as president of the board for the American Literary Translators Association.
Khaled Rajeh is a writer and literary translator from Baakleen, Lebanon. His essays and translations have appeared in ArabLit, Vagabond City, 91st Meridian, and the Michigan Quarterly Review. He holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa, where he is pursuing a PhD.
Parisa Saranj is a writer and Persian translator. Her literary translations have appeared in various print and online journals, including Los Angeles Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Faultline, Asymptote, and Two Lines. She has also translated two books, Empty and Me: A Tale of Loss and Friendship (Lee & Low, 2023) by Azam Mahdavi and Women, Life, Freedom: Our Fight for Human Rights and Equality in Iran (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Nasrin Sotoudeh and two documentaries, Nasrin (2020) and Sansur (2023), on women’s rights in Iran.
Jenna Tang is a Taiwanese Hakka writer and a translator translating between Mandarin, French, Spanish, and English. Her translations and essays are published in The Paris Review, Lit Hub, Fare Magazine, Latin American Literature Today, AAWW, McSweeney’s, Catapult, and elsewhere. Her interviews can be found at World Literature Today, The Sunrise Times, Okapi, Openbook, and Words Without Borders. Her translations include works from Taiwanese feminist authors, Lin Yi-Han (Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise), Lâu Tsí-û (“Not Your Child”), Leah Yang, and more. She has given talks about translation, languages, and gender movements across 25 universities in the United States, Canada, China, and Taiwan.
Kate Zambreno is the author most recently of Animal Stories, a collection on zoos and Kafka, part of Transit Books’ Undelivered Lectures series. A paperback of The Light Room is also forthcoming from Transit. Two novels, Foam and Performance Art, are forthcoming from Semiotext(e) in 2026 and 2027. They are a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies at NYU.