All things translation—January at CAT
January happenings at the Center for the Art of Translation.
As we start 2025, we are deeply moved by the support that the literary community has offered to friends affected by the devastating fires in Southern California. All of us at CAT send our deepest condolences to those who have suffered as a result of this crisis, and we want to highlight a few of our friends in translation who are based in Los Angeles.
- Semiotext(e)(opens in a new tab), whose recent publication Playboy by Constance Debré (trans. Holly James)(opens in a new tab) is a coming-out narrative told in haunting vignettes.
- Unnamed Press(opens in a new tab), the publishers of Under Our Skin by Joaquim Arena (trans. Jethro Soutar)(opens in a new tab), which is a memoir blending history and personal narratives between Portugal and Africa.
- Kaya Press(opens in a new tab), an organization dedicated to the Asian Pacific diaspora. Friend of the Center Andrew Way-Leong translated Shōson Nagahara’s Lament in the Night(opens in a new tab), a pair of Japanese novellas that marked one of the first publications of non-English-speaking immigrants in America.
It’s this community that inspires us to do the work we do. You’re a part of it. We cannot begin 2025 without a heartfelt thank you—to you. Your generous contributions to our year-end fundraising campaign helped us exceed our goal and provided much-needed funds for all of CAT’s programming. We could not do this valuable work without your support. Read below for a sneak peek of what we have in store for you in 2025—and as always, take care.
We’re pleased to share some uplifting news that underscores the power of connection through stories. The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded Two Lines Press $45,000 to support the publication and promotion of new literature in translation, and we thank the NEA for their continued trust in our work.
As if that weren’t enough to celebrate, the NEA also announced this year’s cohort of Translation Fellows, which includes many of our wonderful friends and colleagues: Elina Alter, Jenny Bhatt, YZ Chin, David Larson, Mara Faye Lethem, Alta L. Price, Julia Sanches, Natasha Wimmer, Alex Zucker, and Jeffrey Zuckerman, to name a few. Congratulations, all! We can’t wait to read the fruit of your labors. FIND OUT ABOUT THEIR PROJECTS HERE.
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Keep your eyes on our events page, where we continuously update our calendar. Our first event of the year is happening at San Francisco’s legendary City Lights Bookstore, with Kareem James Abu-Zeid reading from his latest translation, No One Will Know You Tomorrow: Selected Poems of Najwan Darwish, on February 6.
After that, Two Lines Press author Elvira Navarro is going on tour in San Francisco and Portland to celebrate the release of her latest work, The Voices of Adriana (trans. Christina MacSweeney).
- What can’t translators do? Three award-winning translators chat with Electric Literature(opens in a new tab) about how their literary translations shaped their debut novels.
- Damion Searls, translator of the Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse’s Septologyseries, spoke to The New Yorker about his ultimate translation goal(opens in a new tab)—emulating the experience of reading the original text.
- Our friends at the Villa Albertine are currently accepting applications for the 2025 Albertine Fund & Acquisition of Rights(opens in a new tab) for French literature!
- The National Book Critics Circle released the longlist for the Barrios Book in Translation Prize(opens in a new tab). Congrats to all the authors, publishers, and translators!
Giovanna Lomanto is a poet and essayist with a tendency to play the same song on repeat until she has memorized every last note. She received her BA in English at U.C. Berkeley and finished her MFA at NYU, during which time she published two poetry collections and two mixed media chapbooks.
