On North African literature:
Pierre Joris & André Naffis-Sahely

“From where do the vintage bottles come? Certainly not from heaven, but from a long practice by the ONCV (Office National de Commercialisation des Produits Vitivinicoles), but, well, you’re nothing but an idealistic moujik, candid manure; a hick lush of a versifier!”

–from Sultan Galiev, Habib Tengour, trans. Pierre Joris

Wednesday, April 15, 7PM

@ McNally Jackson Books, http://www.mcnallyjackson.com/
52 Prince Street (btwn Lafayette & Mulberry)

Pierre Joris is a poet, translator, essayist & anthologist who has published some 50 books, most recently, Barzakh: Poems 2000–2012, Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry of Paul Celan (currently on the longlist for the 2015 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation), A Voice full of Cities: The Collected Essays of Robert Kelly (co-edited with Peter Cockelbergh) and The University of California Book of North African Literature (volume 4 in the Poems for the Millennium series, coedited with Habib Tengour). With Jerome Rothenberg, he edited volumes 1 & 2, The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, in the same series. Other recent books include Bernat Manciet: Ode to James Dean (translated by Joris & Nicole Peyrafitte), Meditations on the Stations of Mansur al-Hallaj and Exile is My Trade: A Habib Tengour Reader. Pierre Joris: Cartographies of the In-between, essays on Joris’ work edited by Peter Cockelbergh, came out in 2012. His The Meridian: Final Version—Drafts—Materials by Paul Celan was awarded the 2013 MLA Aldo & Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Scholarly Study of Literature). He lives & works in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, performance artist Nicole Peyrafitte.

André Naffis-Sahely’s poetry was most recently featured in The Best British Poetry 2014 and the Oxford Poets Anthology 2013. His translations from the French and the Italian include Balzac’s The Physiology of the Employee, Laurent Seksik’s The Last Days, and The Confines of the Shadow by Alessandro Spina. He has also translated numerous works by North African authors, including The Barbary Figs and the forthcoming The Funerals by Rashid Boudjedra, and The Bottom of the Jar by Abdellatif Laâbi. His translation of Laâbi’s Selected Poems has just received a PEN Translates grant from English PEN. He reviews for The Nation, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Chimurenga Chronic.

This is a co-presentation by the Bridge and the PEN Translation Committee, PEN American Center.

Photo of André Naffis-Sahely © The MacDowell Colony

On Sakutarō Hagiwara: Hiroaki Sato, Eliot Weinberger, and Forrest Gander

I was originally a crow of nihility
on that high roof of winter solstice I’ll open my mouth
and roar like a weathervane.
–“A Crow of Nihility”

Friday, March 20, 7PM

@ McNally Jackson Books, http://www.mcnallyjackson.com/
52 Prince Street (btwn Lafayette & Mulberry)

Hiroaki Sato is the author of Snow in a Silver Bowl: A Quest for the World of Yugen and One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku to English, among other books. He is a contributor to a greatly expanded adaptation of Naoki Inose’s Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima, and the co-editor with Burton Watson of the landmark volume From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry, which won the PEN American Center Translation Prize. Sato has translated three dozen books of Japanese literature and poetry, most recently, Cat Town by Sakutarō Hagiwara in the Calligrams series (New York Review Books Classics); The Iceland (a New Directions Poetry Pamphlet), also by Hagiwara;  and, with Nancy Sato, So Happy to See Cherry Blossoms: Haiku from the Year of the Great Earthquake and Tsunami. He has also translated various American poets into Japanese, among them John Ashbery, Charles Reznikoff, and Jerome Rothenberg. Since 2000 Sato has written a regular column for The Japan Times.

Eliot Weinberger is an essayist, political commentator, translator, and editor. His books of avant-gardist literary essays include Karmic Traces, An Elemental Thing, and, most recently, Oranges & Peanuts for Sale. His political articles are collected in What I Heard About Iraq—called by the Guardian the one antiwar “classic” of the Iraq war—and What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles. The author of a study of Chinese poetry translation, 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, he is the translator of the poetry of Bei Dao, and the editor of The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry and the Calligrams series published by NYRB Classics. His other anthologies include World Beat: International Poetry Now from New Directions and American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators & Outsiders. Among his translations of Latin American poetry and prose are the Collected Poems 1957–1987 of Octavio Paz, Vicente Huidbro’s Altazor, and Jorge Luis Borges’ Selected Non-Fictions, which received the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism. He was born in New York City, where he still lives. Often presented as a “post-national” writer, his work has been translated into thirty languages, and appears frequently in the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and periodicals and newspapers abroad.

Forrest Gander is a poet, translator from Spanish, essayist and novelist. He was born in the Mojave Desert and grew up, for the most part, in Virginia. Trenchant periods of his life were spent in San Francisco, Dolores Hidalgo (Mexico), and Eureka Springs, Arkansas. With degrees in both geology and English literature, Gander is the author of numerous books of poetry, translation, fiction, and essays. He’s the A.K. Seaver Professor of Literary Arts and Comparative Literature at Brown University. A U.S. Artists Rockefeller fellow, Gander has been recipient of grants from the NEA, the Guggenheim, Howard, Witter Bynner and Whiting foundations. His 2011 collection Core Samples from the World was an NBCC and Pulitzer Prize finalist for poetry. His novel The Trace was published by New Directions in November 2014.

Sakutarō Hagiwara (1886–1942) is a seminal figure in Japanese literature. He broke traditional poetic forms in favor of a free-verse style mixing literary and everyday diction with intense imagery, deep philosophy, and verbal distortions.

This is a co-presentation by the Bridge, New Directions, NYRB Classics, and the PEN Translation Committee, PEN American Center. 

On Patrick Modiano:

Mark Polizzotti, David Godine, Sam Sacks

 discuss translating the recent Nobel laureate’s work, independent publishing, and how to review translations

Tuesday, February 17, 7PM

@Albertine
972 Fifth Avenue (btwn 78 & 79th St)

livestreaming here! http://new.livestream.com/frenchembassy/events/3783678

Mark Polizzotti is the author of eight books, including the collaborative novel S. (1991), Lautréamont Nomad (1994), Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995; revised ed., 2009), Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados (British Film Institute, 2006), and Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (Bloomsbury, 2006). His essays and reviews have appeared in ARTnews, Bookforum, The Nation, The New Republic, Parnassus, Partisan Review, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. The translator of over forty books from the French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano, Marguerite Duras, André Breton, Raymond Roussel, and Jean Echenoz, he directs the publications program at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His translation of three novellas by Modiano was published under the title Suspended Sentences by the Margellos World Republic of Letters series, Yale University Press, in November 2014.

David R. Godine is the publisher of the eponymously named press. Founded in 1970, the press began by bringing out fine letterpress editions, and then moved on to more general trade publishing: its list now consists of fiction, biography, photography, books on the history of printing and the graphic arts, and children’s books. Two of its authors, J.M.G. Le Clézio and Patrick Modiano, have received the Nobel Prize.

Sam Sacks writes the Wall Street Journal’s weekly Fiction Chronicle. He is also a founding editor of the online arts and literature journal Open Letters Monthly. His criticism has appeared in the London Review of Books, Commentary, Prospect, the New Yorker’s book blog Page-Turner, the Barnes & Noble Review, and elsewhere. He lives in New York City.

This is a co-presentation by the Bridge and the PEN Translation Committee, PEN American Center. 

Samantha Schnee & Carmen Boullosa

discussing Latin American literature in translation
and reading from their new novel
TEXAS
(Deep Vellum 2014)

Wednesday, October 29, 8PM
McNally Jackson 
52 Prince Street, NYC, 10012

*revised event program; Gregory Rabassa will not be presenting
as originally announced

Samantha Schnee is the founding editor of Words Without Borders, a website of literature from over 100 countries, translated into English. She holds an MFA in Fiction from the New School and a BA in English Literature from Dartmouth College. She has been translating from the Spanish for a decade and has worked with Carmen Boullosa since 2006. Her translation of Boullosa’s novel Texas will be published by Deep Vellum Publishing in December 2014.

Carmen Boullosa is one of Mexico’s leading writers. The author of over a dozen novels that have received numerous prizes and honors, Boullosa has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library. Also a poet and playwright, she has taught at New York University, Columbia University, CUNY, and Georgetown, among other universities, and she hosts a television show, Nueva York, on CUNY-TV, which has received five New York Emmys. Her work has been translated into several languages, and she is currently a FONCA fellow in Mexico. She lives in Brooklyn and Mexico City. More information can be found at www.carmenboullosa.net, and her twitter handle is @carmenboullosa.

This is a co-presentation by the Bridge and the PEN Translation Committee, PEN American Center. 

Photo credit for Samantha Schnee © Anita Staff.

The Bridge Series &
PEN American Center Translation Committee

launch their new partnership and invite you to join us
at the Brooklyn Book Festival
with three prominent translators of science fiction

Ross Benjamin (German)
Terry Gallagher (Japanese)
Michael Kandel (Polish)

who will read and discuss their work

@ Singularity & Co. bookstore
18 Bridge St., Brooklyn, NY 11201

September 18, 2014, @ 7 PM

An Official Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event

ROSS BENJAMIN is a translator of German literature and a writer living in Nyack, New York. His translations include Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion, Kevin Vennemann’s Close to Jedenew, Joseph Roth’s Job, Thomas Pletzinger’s Funeral for a Dog, and Wolfgang Jeschke’s The Cusanus Game. He was awarded the 2010 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his rendering of Michael Maar’s Speak, Nabokov. His literary criticism has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, The Nation, and other publications. He was a 2003–2004 Fulbright Scholar in Berlin and is a graduate of Vassar College. He is currently at work on a translation of Franz Kafka’s complete Diaries, and his translation of Clemens Setz’s novel Indigo will be published by Liveright/Norton in November 2014.

TERRY GALLAGHER is best known for his translations of Toh EnJoe, 2012 winner of Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize. Gallagher’s translation of EnJoe’s debut work, Self-Reference ENGINE (Viz Media, 2013), received the Philip K. Dick Award Special Citation this year. In the 1990s, Gallagher contributed translations of short stories by Masahiko Shimada and Amy Yamada to Monkey Brain Sushi (Kodansha), a ground-breaking anthology of new Japanese literature. He has translated a total of five book-length works for Viz Media, and short stories for the anthologies Monkey Business 4 (A Public Space, 2014), The Future is Japanese (Viz, 2012), and Speculative Japan 2 (Kurodahan Press, 2011). Gallagher spent 15 years as a journalist for Reuters and Dow Jones, in Tokyo, Bonn and New York. Originally from Brooklyn, he graduated from Brown University, and has now lived for 15 years on Cape Cod (yes, even in winter).

MICHAEL KANDEL is perhaps best known for his translation of major works—including Fiasco, His Master’s Voice, The Cyberiad, A Perfect Vacuum, and The Futurological Congress—of Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem. Kandel has also translated works by Jacek Dukaj and Andrzej Sapkoswki, and he is the editor and translator of the anthology A Polish Book of Monsters. He also worked as an editor at Harcourt, where he acquired authors Jonathan Lethem, Ursula K. Le Guin, James Morrow, and others. Kandel was a Fulbright student in Poland, 1966-67; received his PhD in Slavic Literature at Indiana University; taught Russian literature at George Washington University; wrote a few articles on Lem; and has written science fiction, short stories, and a few novels (published by Bantam, St. Martin’s); and is presently an editor at the Modern Language Association. His translation of Marek Huberath’s Nest of Worlds was published by Restless Books last year.

Poets|Translators

Rika Lesser & Denise Newman

will read and discuss their work

Thursday, June 19, 8 PM

please note the slightly different time: 8 PM

McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince Street, New York City 10012

This is the second in a series of readings featuring translators who are poets.

Translators from Hebrew

Jessica Cohen

translator of David Grossman’s new book Falling Out of Time

&

Evan Fallenberg

translator of Meir Shalev’s My Russian Grandmother
and Her American Vacuum Cleaner

read and discuss their work

Thursday, May 1, 7 PM

McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince Street, New York City 10012

Celebrate World Literature!
This event is free and open to the public.

Jessica Cohen is an independent literary translator from Hebrew. Her recent translations include three books by David Grossman: his acclaimed novel, To the End of the Land (Knopf, 2010), Her Body Knows (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award, and his newest book, Falling Out of Time (March, 2014). She has also translated Yael Hedaya’s novels Accidents and Eden (both Metropolitan Books), Amir Gutfreund’s novels The World a Moment Later and Our Holocaust (both Toby Press), and Tom Segev’s 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East (Metropolitan Books, 2007). Her shorter translations have appeared in The New York Times, Tablet Magazine, Newsweek International, The Forward and elsewhere.

Evan Fallenberg’s book translations include Meir Shalev’s My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner (Schocken, 2011) and A Pigeon and a Boy (Schocken, 2009), winner of the National Jewish Book Award for fiction and a PEN Translation Prize finalist; Ron Leshem’s Beaufort (Delacorte, 2007) and Yair Lapid’s Memories After My Death (Elliott & Thompson, 2012), both recipients of TLS Translation Prize commendations; and Alon Hilu’s novels Death of a Monk (Vintage, 2007) and The House of Rajani (Vintage, 2011). He also works in television (Adir Miller), the stage (Gilad Evron, Lior Navok), and cinema (Savi Gabizon). Fallenberg is the author of two novels, Light Fell (Soho Press, 2008) and When We Danced on Water (HarperCollins, 2011). He teaches creative writing and literary translation at Bar-Ilan University of Israel and City University of Hong Kong and is a recent recipient of a fellowship for literary translation from the NEA.

Poets|Translators

Cole Swensen & Kit Schluter

will read and discuss their work

Sunday, February 9, 7PM

McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince Street, New York City 10012

This is the first in a series of readings featuring translators who are poets