Claiming Space: Carvalho, Ginzburg, and Ocampo
The Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith and the Center for the Art of Translation co-present an online event with Margaret Jull Costa, Jenny McPhee, and Suzanne Jill Levine to discuss their translations of Maria Judite de Carvalho, Natalia Ginzburg, and Silvina Ocampo, moderated by Kate Zambreno.
Inspired by the publication of Empty Wardrobes—Maria Judite de Carvalho’s cutting 1966 novel, translated from Portuguese for the first time by Margaret Jull Costa, this panel event focuses on three women writers widely overlooked in their time but who have been given new life and recognition in translation.
Margaret Jull Costa has worked as a translator for over thirty years, translating the works of many Spanish and Portuguese writers, among them novelists: Javier Marías, José Saramago, Eça de Queiroz, and Teolinda Gersão, and poets: Fernando Pessoa, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, and Ana Luísa Amaral. Her work has brought her many prizes, most recently the Premio Valle-Inclán for On the Edge by Rafael Chirbes.
Jenny McPhee is the author of the novels The Center of Things, No Ordinary Matter, and A Man of No Moon, and co-authored Girls: Ordinary Girls and Their Extraordinary Pursuits. Her translations include works by Anna Banti, Massimo Bontempelli, Cristina Campo, Fausta Cialente, Beppe Fenoglio, Natalia Ginzburg, Primo Levi, Elsa Morante, Anna Maria Ortese, Curzio Malaparte, Paolo Maurensig, and Pope John Paul II. She teaches literary translation and contemporary global literature at NYU’s School of Professional Studies where she is the Academic Director of Continuing Education at the Center for Applied Liberal Arts. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020.
Suzanne Jill Levine is General Editor of Penguin’s paperback classics of Jorge Luis Borges’ poetry and essays, and a noted translator of Latin American prose and poetry by distinguished writers such as Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Jose Donoso, Manuel Puig, Severo Sarduy, and Adolfo Bioy Casares. Director of Translation Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, her most recent published translation is Cristina Rivera Garza’s The Taiga Syndrome (The Dorothy Project, 2018).
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.
Natalia Ginzburg (1916–1991) was born Natalia Levi in Palermo, Sicily, the daughter of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. She grew up in Turin, in a household that was a salon for antifascist activists, intellectuals, and artists, and published her first short stories at the age of eighteen; she would go on to become one of the most important and widely taught writers in Italy, taking up the themes of oppression, family, and social change.
Silvina Ocampo (1903–1993) was a central figure of Argentine literary circles. She was an early contributor to Argentina’s Sur magazine, where she worked closely with its founder, her sister Victoria Ocampo; Adolfo Bioy Casares, her husband; and Jorge Luis Borges. (Photo credit: Adolfo Bioy Casares)