The Center for the Art of Translation

Friends, this is the LAST WEEK to donate to our fall fundraising campaign and bring world poetry and translation to hundreds of students this year! https://www.catranslation.org/donate/

Up now on Two Lines: "Fragments from the Book of Decline (ФРАГМЕНТЫ ИЗ КНИГИ УПАДКА) by Galina Rymbu, translated from Russian by Anastasiya Osipova. Fragments from the Book of Decline will be published in Rymbu's English-language debut, LIFE IN SPACE, available this November from Ugly Duckling Presse. Art by Antonio Carrau. https://www.catranslation.org//from-fragments-from-the-bo/

In a field long dominated by men, these works also represent the invigorating opening up of Mexican literature to other points of viewparticularly, those of women, as well as of Indigenous writers. A fantastic essay by Carolyn Fornoff for Public Books concerning two recent book by Mexican women, both of them translated by the great Christina MacSweeney: ON LIGHTHOUSES by Jazmina Barrera (Two Lines Press) and EMPTY SET by Verónica Gerber Bicecci (Coffee House Press).

Over at On the Seawall: A Community Gallery of New Writing & Commentary, Ron Slate considers Masatsugu Ono's ECHO ON THE BAY, available now from Two Lines Press. The ‘echo’ on the bay is the reverberation of [the village’s] historyand I’m guessing the Japanese response to the novel, and the lavishing of praise and prizes that followed, have much to do with Japan’s relief at finding a form for its unresolved anxieties and guilt.

2020 marks the release of the first-ever Russian translation of John Hersey's bestselling account of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima--almost 75 years after its original publication. https://www.nytimes.com//hiroshima-john-hersey-russia.html

A friendly reminder that your favorite indie bookstore needs your support--and your book order: https://www.nytimes.com//independent-bookstores-economy.ht

More than 100 San Francisco artists could receive $1,000 a month to help survive the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Why it may no longer be possible to make a living as a full-time artist.

If you can, donate to our fall campaign to give students a voice and bring world poetry and translation to students during distance learning! https://www.catranslation.org/donate/

There is an assurance in these walls because, relative to me, they do not change. The light and the wind, whose mere entry changes the room in an instant, can be kept outside. I can also begin myself from some other place, in such a way that I do not love, nor grieve, nor hope. Life’s meanings are many things, not just any one. And at that instant I felt that all the things in the room together presented me with a life in which there was neither good nor bad, because in it were neither needs, nor duties. There was only a sequence of things, in which it was nowhere necessary to prove oneself. Up now on Two Lines, Near and Around Shapes by Kunwar Narain, translated from Hindi by Apurva Narain & John Vater. Art by Thom Colligan. https://www.catranslation.org/journ/near-and-around-shapes/

HOME’s true beauty lies in the way in which its poems reveal to the English-speaking reader that the minds giving life to these observations and these ideasthose minds living in worlds so far away and for some so hard to imagineare not so different from their own.fluid and thought-provoking. Hugely grateful for this review of HOME: NEW ARABIC POEMS in The Harvard Crimson!

Poetry Inside Out empowers students and "gives them an opportunity to see themselves on the page". Read about one teacher's take on our virtual workshop that will help her bring poetry and translation to students in this time of distance learning: https://www.catranslation.org//centering-writing-and-lite/

It is possible that I am inflicting an injustice on my daughter, and that for no good reason I am wrapping her in fabric for toddlers. In Gail Hareven's Dress (), translated from Hebrew by Adriana X. Jacobs, a seamstress contemplates her daughter's brown dress, color, and war, while quietly awaiting some unspoken catastrophe. Read it on Two Lines. Illustration by Thom Colligan. https://www.catranslation.org/journal-post/dress/