As part of the 2023 ALTA (American Literary Translators Association) Conference in Tucson, Arizona, the BIPOC Literary Translators Caucus and Asian American Writers’ Workshop present A Translation Reading. The event will take place in-person at Tuscon’s Sky Bar from 7-8pm PT and is FREE and open to the public. No RSVP required.

Limited drinks and appetizers available for event participants. Masks recommended.

The reading is hosted by Jenna Tang, Soleil Davíd, Isabella Corletto, and features:

May Huang
Poetry by Derek Chung, translated from Chinese
Poems from A Cha Chaan Teng That Does Not Exist

Hajar Hussaini
Poetry by Maral Taheri, translated from Persian
“And the Poem Could Have Been a Wound that Never Opens to Ooze” & “Third-World Beloved”

Archana Madhavan
Poetry by Lee Jenny, translated from Korean
Poems from MAYBE AFRICA

Jon Cho-Polizzi
Autofiction by Lin Hierse, translated from German
Wovon wir träumen [The Things We Dream Of] 

Naveed Alam
Poetry by Nasreen Anjum Bhatti & Sara Shagufta, translated from Punjabi
Flames Prefer to be Naked

Cindy Juyoung Ok
Poetry by Kim Hyesoon, translated from Korean
The Hell of That Star

About the BIPOC Literary Translators Caucus:
This reading series celebrates the diversity of languages and identities in the world of translation. We aim to highlight the art of literary translation, introduce the BIPOC Literary Translators Caucus, and present the significance of works from BIPOC translators and authors. This year, we’re in collaboration with the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW), which, since 1991, has been devoted to creating, publishing, developing, and disseminating creative writing by Asian Americans, and to providing an alternative literary arts space at the intersection of migration, race, and social justice. 

The BIPOC Literary Translators Caucus, formed at the 2020 American Literary Translators Association Conference (ALTA), is a collective open to all literary translators across the world who identify as BIPOC. We strive to create a space of camaraderie and support; we meet regularly, workshop work in-progress, and share resources. Though we are based in the US, we welcome people joining from around the world, and membership is not limited to ALTA members. 

JOIN THE CAUCUS TODAY:
Sign up today and join our community! There are language-specific channels (Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, and more), as well as region-specific channels (NYC and others), once you’re in, please feel free to join!

About the Venue:
Sky Bar is Tucson’s Solar Powered Cafe by Day, Astronomy Bar by Night. Sky Bar is wheelchair accessible. Everything is on one level. Exiting the streetcar, patrons will cross to the sidewalk, and the entrance to Sky Bar is directly off the sidewalk, about 200 ft from the streetcar stop. All of the sidewalks have wheelchair access, and the ground is flat, other than the aprons for the sidewalks. Access to restrooms are wheelchair friendly. Access copies of the readings will be provided.

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MEET OUR READERS: 

May Huang (she/her) is a writer and translator from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Her work has appeared in The Common, Electric Literature, Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. She is a PEN/HEIM grant recipient and former ALTA Emerging Translator. Her translation of A Cha Chaan Teng That Does Not Exist (Zephyr Press, 2023) by Derek Chung published in October. She constructs crosswords in her spare time. Twitter: @mayhuangwrites.

Hajar Hussaini (she/her) is a poet and translator from Kabul. Hussaini’s translations have appeared in Asymptote and the Los Angeles Review and have been finalists for the Mo Habib Translation Prize and the Anne Frydman Translation Prize. Hussaini’s first poetry collection is Disbound (University of Iowa Press, 2022). Her long titular poem is available through Daedalus, the open-access journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Poetry Foundation published her poetic statement on Disbound. An Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate, she teaches at Skidmore College.

Archana Madhavan (she/her) is a translator from Korean into English. Her translations have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. Her first book-length work was a co-translation of Glory Hole by Kim Hyun (Seagull Books, June 2022). In 2022, she was selected as the ALTA Emerging Translator for Korean poetry to translate work by Lee Jenny.

Jon Cho-Polizzi (he/him) is a literary translator and Assistant Professor of German at the University of Michigan. His research and translation interests include translingualism, migration, and other formulations of radical diversity in the Berlin literary scene. Originally from Northern California, Jon studied literature, history, and translation in Santa Cruz, Berkeley, and Heidelberg, Germany. Recent publications include Ada’s Room by Sharon Dodua Otoo and De-Integrate: A Jewish Survival Guide for the 21st Century by Max Czollek. His translation of Fatma Aydemir’s Djinns is forthcoming.

Naveed Alam (they/them) translated a 15th-century Punjabi poet-saint, Madho Lal Hussein, into English in 2016 (Penguin Classics). They received a NEA Literary Translation Fellowship in 2021 to translate two contemporary women poets from Punjabi to English. The work was published as Flames Prefer to be Naked: Selected Poetry of Nasreen Anjum Bhatti & Sara Shagufta (THAAP Publications). They’re currently pursuing a PhD degree in English at Texas Tech University.

Cindy Juyoung Ok (she/they) is the author of the forthcoming poetry debut Ward Toward. A MacDowell Fellow, Kenyon Review Fellow, and Lambda Literary Fellow, her translations from The Hell of That Star are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, swamp pink, and The Hopkins Review. 

MEET THE HOSTS: 

Jenna Tang is a Taiwanese writer and a translator who translates between Chinese, French, Spanish, and English. Her translations and essays are published in Latin American Literature Today, AAWW, McSweeney’s, Catapult, and elsewhere. She was a 2021 Mentee at ALTA Emerging Translators Mentorship program with a focus on Taiwanese prose. She has translated Lin Yi-Han’s novel, Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise, forthcoming from HarperVia in June 2024.

Soleil Davíd (she/her) is a poet and translator from the Philippines. Her honors include the Bread Loaf Scholarship, the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship, and the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. She is a senior editor at The Margins.

Isabella Corletto (she/her) is a translator from Guatemala. Her translations from Spanish and Italian include Amalia Andrade’s Things You Think About When You Bite Your Nails (Penguin Books, 2020) and work published in the Cincinnati Review, the Arkansas International, and elsewhere. She has received a Bread Loaf Scholarship and was the recipient of the 2023 PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature.