Photo by Chris Wood / Flickr Houston’s Second Poet Laureate (2015–2017) and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 2019, Robin Davidson is the author of three books of poetry: Kneeling…

2021 was a robust year for literary translations. This list kept growing, and we didn’t resist. As always, though, we recognize there are, thankfully, many more and hope you’ll add them in the comment…

I stepped out of Keflavík airport at 4:30 a.m. Far off in the dimly lit parking lot was the bus to Reykjavík—parked, empty, still off-duty. Winds buffeted me from above, the cold air curling its way u…

Esther Gerritsen Craving (fiction) Trans. Michele Hutchinson World Editions In Dutch writer Esther Gerritsen’s Craving, readers follow Coco, who moves in with her dying mother as a m…

PHOTO: Edward Hill A prolific translator, playwright, novelist, and essayist from Singapore, Jeremy Tiang is the recipient of a PEN/Heim Grant, an NEA Literary Translation Fello…

Ksenia Buksha / Courtesy of the author With apologies to Raymond Carver, what do we translate when we translate literature? What are we doing? And how do we do it? There ar…

Translating poetry is impossible in the sense that prose works can be translated (not to speak of the translation of nonliterary texts). But re-creating poetry in a different language is always possi…

Looking back on 2017, it’s easy to declare the year a success for literary translation, which continued to thrive and move in exciting new directions. Of note, Emily Wilson translated The Odyssey…

Seth Michelson / Courtesy of Washington & Lee University In October 2017 nonprofit press Settlement House released Dreaming America: Voices of Undocumented Youth in Maximum-Security Detention…

Top right: Ben Faccini / Courtesy of English PEN. Bottom right: Kelsey Madsen Ben Faccini is a novelist, writer, and translator based in London. He was born in England and brought up in France and It…

Liu Xiaobo, 1991 / Courtesy of Wang Ya Translator’s note: This photo of Liu Xiaobo swimming surfaced on the Internet after the sea burial in Dalian, China. Those of us who were hear…

Ekin Oklap discusses her personal journey to becoming a translator and provides some insight into her experiences with translating her current project, Orhan Pamuk’s The Red-Haired…

John, “Fallen Angel,” August 29, 2010   Here and Now Here he is sitting across from the balcony door;the wind will blow – a wound. The rustling lightblushes and fades in the rectangular mirror – th…

Photo by Jonathan Armstrong Translator Allison Markin Powell discusses her most recent project, The Nakano Thrift Shop, and provides some insight into her approach to t…

Lorenzo Gaudenzi, “Agria,” September 15, 2016 For more, read Brian Sneeden’s translator’s note on Giannisi’s work.   (Nostos I)                                                 f…

moomin goat, “Goat Bells,” April 9, 2007 Click here to read Sneeden’s translations of four of Giannisi’s poems.  Phoebe Giannisi is one of Greece’s foremost contemporary poets and i…

The only task FitzGerald finished and published in his lifetime was his marvelous rendering of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam, with whom he felt a curiously close affinity across a…

Mike Prince, “Black Drongo at Sunrise,” October 7, 2015 Where Would I Go Where would I goI shall only stay here, like a handprinton a doorjust to be there, I’ll be hidden inthe smell of a suitcases…

Mathias Énard’s Compass (New Directions, 2017) is not only a love letter to the field of orientalism but, more broadly, to the power of the written word itself, especially in translation. I…

The dog days of summer are upon us, and there’s no better way to pass through the longer days than curling up with a book in the shade. If you’re looking for some words to keep you company, there are…

Robert Creeley (1972) / Photo by Elsa Dorfman In April, following the death of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, I was digging through a wicker chest with old papers, looking at a colleague’s request for a few le…

Six years after its initial French publication, Luis de Miranda’s novella Who Killed the Poet? (Qui a tué le poète?) is being translated into English and multiple other language…

Starling murmuration. Photo by Airwolfhound/Flickr Five years after meeting at the Literary Translation Summer School run by the British Centre for Literary Translation, translators Morgan Giles,…

Drawing by Lea Goldberg / Courtesy of Tuvia Ruebner Lea Goldberg (1911–1970), preeminent, versatile, and prolific writer of modern Hebrew letters, produced in her lifetime poetry that was characteriz…

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase (1912), oil on canvas, 147 × 89.2 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art / The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950 Desnudo bajando una escalera…