Lit&Lunch: How to Translate Fairy Tales
111 Minna Gallery | 111 Minna Street | San Francisco, CA
Join us at this Lit&Lunch to discuss the fine art of translating fairy tales. Noted writers and translators Kate Bernheimer, Ilya Kaminsky, and Maria Tatar talk about My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, their anthology of fairy tales.
Here they discuss the unique craft of translating myth and the history of fairy tales. They also talk about why the tales in this book were too risqué for the Brothers Grimm.
Kate Bernheimer is the author of a novel trilogy and the story collections Horse, Flower, Bird and How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales, among other books. She also has edited four anthologies, including My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales. She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she teaches fairy tales and creative writing.
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and currently lives in San Diego. He’s the author of Dancing In Odessa, and the co-editor of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. With Jean Valentine, he has co-translated Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva.
Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures. She chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University, where she teaches courses in German Studies, Folklore, and Children’s Literature.